Understanding the Correct Order of Adjectives.

 

I love writing, therefore, it goes without saying that I love adjectives. By using adjectives correctly, we take writing out of the realms of boring and propel it into the world of creative imagination, academic curiosity, accurate explanations, and many more.

Adjectives are words that describe or modify other words, making your writing and speaking much more specific, and a whole lot more interesting. Words like large, green, and pointy are descriptive, and they are all examples of adjectives. Because adjectives are used to identify or quantify individual people and unique things, they are usually positioned before the noun or pronoun that they modify. 

Whilst the majority of sentences include just a single adjective, some contain multiple adjectives, hence the need for the rules for the correct order for adjectives. When we use more than one adjective to describe a noun, the adjectives are either cumulative or coordinative.

Cumulative adjectives are adjectives that must appear in a special order to express the meaning that we want to express. For example, if I told a native English speaker that I was buying a folding new bicycle, they might not understand me.

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The order of cumulative adjectives is as follows:
quantity, opinion, size, age, color, shape, origin, material, and purpose.

Quantity

These adjectives answer the question “How much?” or “How many?” They can refer to specific numbers, like two or 31, or to more general amounts, like “whole” “half” “a lot” or “several.”

Let’s hear an example:

I’m about to order two large pizzas. Which toppings do you like?

The adjective “two” comes before the adjective “large” and they both describe the noun “pizza.”

If the person had said, “I’m about to order large two pizzas,” the listeners would have probably been confused. That’s strong evidence that these are cumulative adjectives.

Opinion

Next in word order comes opinion adjectives, which express how we feel about something.

Descriptive words like “tasty” “strong” “ugly” “costly” “stubborn” and “happy” are examples of our opinions.

For instance:

I ordered two tasty large pizzas for the game.

The three adjectives -- two, large and tasty -- all work as a group to build meaning onto one another rather than act as individual descriptions of the noun “pizza.”

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Size

This includes any number of descriptive size words, such as “large” “big” and “little.”

In our pizza example, the size (large) follows the established order.

Here it is again. Listen for the word “large” after the other adjectives.

I ordered two tasty large pizzas for the game.

Age

This can refer to specific age adjectives, such as 26-year-old, or such words as “young” “old” “middle-aged” and so on.

One thing to note is that, in English, it is possible but not common for more than three adjectives to describe one noun in speech or writing.

In addition, not all native speakers or English experts put age after opinion.

With that in mind, consider this example:

The big old ugly pick-up truck puttered along the road.

That is how I – along with many American English speakers – would say it. Notice that I put the word “old” before the opinion “ugly.”

But, based on the traditional order, it would go like this:

The ugly big old pick-up truck puttered along the road.

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Shape

This includes words like “long” “short” and “round” or words for specific shapes, like square.

Here’s how you might use it:

The ugly big old wide pick-up truck puttered along the road.

That's a lot of adjectives for one noun -- a rarity but not impossible.

Color

We normally use color adjectives to describe objects and animals:

The ugly big old wide red pick-up truck puttered along the road.

Does this sound like too many descriptive words? That’s because it probably is.

Origin

This group describes origin, ethnicity and religion. Words like Peruvian, Australian or Christian fall in this group.

But, instead of putting several adjectives before one noun, let’s hear what a real person might say:

We found a beautiful 200-year-old blue Peruvian ceramic pot.

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Material

Material adjectives are usually nouns that act as adjectives when used to describe other nouns -- like metal, paper and silk.

We’ll build on the rug example, like this:

We found a beautiful 200-year-old blue Peruvian clay pot.

As you can hear, five adjectives do not sound very appealing! But technically speaking, it is both correct and acceptable.

Purpose

Remember the bicycle in an earlier sentence? We used the word “folding” to describe a very specific kind of bicycle.

For purpose adjectives, we usually also use a noun as an adjective. “Folding” is a gerund – a kind of noun ending in -ing.

So, let’s suppose I got my wish. I might say this:

My pretty new electric folding bicycle is so much fun! I’m very happy with it.

Well, I hope that you found this article to be useful.

Good luck and good teaching

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