Adjectives: order

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):

She was wearing an amazing red coat.

Not: … red amazing coat

If we don’t want to emphasise any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:

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

It was made of a 1strange, 6green, 8metallic material.

It’s a 2long, 4narrow, 8plastic brush.

Panettone is a 4round, 7Italian, 9bread-like Christmas cake.

Here are some invented examples of longer adjective phrases. A noun phrase which included all these types would be extremely rare.

She was a 1beautiful, 2tall, 3thin, 5young, 6black-haired, 7Scottish woman.

What an 1amazing, 2little, 5old, 7Chinese cup and saucer!

Adjectives joined by and

When more than one adjective occurs after a verb such as be (a linking verb), the second last adjective is normally connected to the last adjective by and:

Home was always a warm, welcoming place. Now it is sad, dark and cold.

And is less common when more than one adjective comes before the noun (e.g. a warm, welcoming place). However, we can use and when there are two or more adjectives of the same type, or when the adjectives refer to different parts of the same thing:

It was a blue and green cotton shirt.