What is an adjective? An adjective is a word that describes something (a noun). An adjective gives us more information about a person or thing. Correct order of adjectives Adjectives sometimes appear after the verb To Be (CARD – LINK TO VIDEO) The order is To Be + Adjective. • He is tall. • She is happy. Adjectives sometimes appear before a noun. The order is Adjective + Noun. • Slow car • Brown hat BUT… Sometimes you want to use more than one adjective to describe something (or someone). What happens if a hat is both brown AND old? Do we say… an old brown hat OR a brown old hat? An old brown hat is correct because a certain order for adjectives is expected. A brown old hat sounds incorrect or not natural. So what is the correct order of adjectives before a noun? The order of adjectives before a noun is usually the following: Opinion – Size – Age – Shape – Color – Origin – Material – Purpose If we take the first letter of each one, it creates OSASCOMP which is an easy way to remember the order. Let’s look at an example about describing a bag. • It is an ugly small old thin red Italian cotton sleeping bag It is not common to have so many adjectives before a noun, but I do this so you can see the correct order of adjectives. Ugly is an opinion, small is a size, old refers to age, thin refers to shape, red is a color, Italian refers to its origin, cotton refers to the material the bag is made of, sleeping is the purpose of the bag. I will go into more details about each of these categories in a moment. First, let’s see two more examples: • A beautiful long white French silk wedding dress. • Large ancient Greek clay flower vases. Let’s study the first one. Here we have a dress. Dress is a noun, the name of a thing. Let’s describe this dress. What type of dress is it? What is the purpose of this dress? It is used for weddings so it is… • a wedding dress. Let’s image the dress is made of silk. It isn’t made of plastic or gold, it is made of silk. Silk is a material so it goes before the purpose. We say it is: • a silk wedding dress. Now, this dress was made in France. France is a noun, its adjective is French. Its origin is French. Its origin, French, goes before the material, Silk. So we say it is: • a French silk wedding dress. Let’s add the color of the dress. What color is it? White. Color goes before Origin so we say it is: • a white French silk wedding dress. What is the shape of this dress? Is it long or short? It is long. The adjective Long goes under the category of shape because shape also covers weight or length. (We will see more about this in a moment) We now say it is: • a long white French silk wedding dress. Let’s add one more adjective. Is the dress beautiful or ugly? Well, you should always say it is beautiful or it will ruin her wedding day. Beautiful is an opinion and adjectives about opinions go before all the other adjective.

1. Adjective
Types, Order and position of Adjective

2. Adjectives
• Adjectives are one of the four major word classes, along with nouns, verbs
and adverbs. Examples of adjectives are: big, small, blue, old, rich and nice.
They give us more information about people, animals or things represented
by nouns and pronouns:
That’s a big house.
Look at the grey horse.
Some dogs have long tails.
• I love that really big old green antique car that always parked at the
end of the street.

3. Order of
adjectives:
When more than one
adjective comes before a
noun, the adjectives are
normally in a particular
order.Adjectives which
describe opinions or
attitudes (e.g. amazing)
usually come first, before
more neutral, factual ones
(e.g. red):
Order Relating to Examples
1 Opinion unusual, lovely, beautiful
2 Size big, small, tall
3 physical quality thin, rough, untidy
4 Shape round, square,
rectangular
5 Age young, old, youthful
6 Colour blue, red, pink
7 Origin Dutch, Japanese,
Turkish
8 Material metal, wood, plastic
9 Type general-purpose, four-
sided, U-shaped
10 Purpose cleaning, hammering,
cooking

4. Position of adjectives
• Adjectives usually go before the nouns they modify.
• She is a nice girl. (Here the adjective nice modifies the noun girl and
goes before it.)
• He is an intelligent boy.
• That was a clever idea.

5. When two or more adjectives come before a
noun, they are usually separated by commas.
• A large, round table
• A short, fair, pretty girl
• (Note that we do not put a comma after the last
adjective in the series.)

6. When the last two are adjectives of color,
they are usually separated by and.
• A black and white cow (NOT black white cow)
• Red and blue socks
• The house is green and red.
• We live in the big green, white and red house at the end of the
street.
• My friend lost a red, black and white watch.

7. When two or more adjectives come in the
predicative position, we use and between the
last two.
• It was hot and sultry.
• The boy was handsome, smart and polite.
• The clouds looked white and fluffy.

8. Order of adjectives – examples
Determiner
Quantity
or
number
Quality
or
opinion
Size Age Shape Color
Proper
adjective
Purpose
or
qualifier
Noun
A beautiful old Italian sports car
The three beautiful little gold plates
An amazing
heart-
shaped
red and
white
sofa

9. examples:
• I love that beautiful old big green antique car that always parked at the
end of the street. [quality – age – size – color – proper adjective]
• My sister has a big beautiful tan and white bulldog. [size – quality –
color – color]
• A wonderful old Italian clock. [opinion – age – origin]
• A big square blue box. [dimension – shape – color]
• A disgusting pink plastic ornament. [opinion – color – material]
• Some slim new French trousers. [dimension – age – origin]

10.  1. Choose the best answer for each sentence.
 The house is __________________.
 large and white
 white and large
 large white
 Answers: A – large and white
 They live in a __________________ house.
 large and white
 white and large
 large white
 Answers: – large white

11.  Our work uniform consists of black pants, black shoes, and a
________________ shirt.
 yellow baggy big polo
 big baggy yellow polo
 baggy yellow big polo
 Answers: retriever B – big baggy yellow polo
 I’ve been spending a lot of time in antique shops looking for the perfect
_______________ clock.
 little silver Italian cuckoo
 little Italian silver cuckoo
 silver little Italian cuckoo
 Answers: little silver Italian cuckoo

12.  Which sentence uses the correct order of adjectives?
 We took a ride on a blue, old Chinese bus.
 We took a ride on a Chinese, old, blue bus.
 We took a ride on an old, blue Chinese bus.
 Answer: C
 Which sentence uses the correct order of adjectives?
 I’d like three good reasons why you don’t like spinach.
 I’d like a good three reasons why you don’t like spinach.
 I’d like good reasons three why you don’t like spinach.
 Answer: A

13. Now
it much easier to
identify different
types
of adjectives.
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