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Adjectives
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PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOR TEENS

THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES

The Order of Adjectives in a Series

It would take a linguistic philosopher to explain why we say "little brown house" and not "brown little house" or why we say "red Italian sports car" and not "Italian red sports car." The order in which adjectives in a series sort themselves out is perplexing for people learning English as a second language. Most other languages dictate a similar order, but not necessarily the same order. It takes a lot of practice with a language before this order becomes instinctive, because the order often seems quite arbitrary (if not downright capricious). There is, however, a pattern. You will find many exceptions to the pattern in the table below, but it is definitely important to learn the pattern of adjective order if it is not part of what you naturally bring to the language.

The categories in the following table can be described as follows:

  1. Determiners — articles and other limiters. See Determiners
  2. Observation — postdeterminers and limiter adjectives (e.g., a real hero, a perfect idiot) and adjectives subject to subjective measure (e.g., beautiful, interesting)
  3. Size and Shape — adjectives subject to objective measure (e.g., wealthy, large, round)
  4. Age — adjectives denoting age (e.g., young, old, new, ancient)
  5. Color — adjectives denoting color (e.g., red, black, pale)
  6. Origin — denominal adjectives denoting source of noun (e.g., French, American, Canadian)
  7. Material — denominal adjectives denoting what something is made of (e.g., woolen, metallic, wooden)
  8. Qualifier — final limiter, often regarded as part of the noun (e.g., rocking chair, hunting cabin, passenger car, book cover)
# THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES #
Determiner Observation Physical Description Origin Material Qualifier Noun
  Size Shape Age Color  
a beautiful     old   Italian   touring car
an expensive     antique     silver   mirror
four gorgeous   long-
stemmed
  red   silk   roses
her     short   black       hair
our   big   old   English     sheepdog
those     square       wooden hat boxes
that dilapidated little           hunting cabin
several   enormous   young   American   basketball players
some delicious         Thai     food