The adjectival order…

Hello friends,

This time, I’ll stick to my profession and (teach you a lesson or two in English).

Anyone who has attended elementary school knows what adjectives are. How much elementary school information is retained, is a different matter altogether. Just so you don’t end up scratching your scalp dry – adjectives are words that describe a noun. E.g. in the phrase ‘the tall boy’ – ‘boy’ is the noun and ‘tall’ is the adjective.

Now let’s take another example – I have white 10 roses beautiful in my garden.

This sentence sounds quite odd – doesn’t it? I’d be damned if anyone says NO. indeed the sentence is wrong. The slightly informed ones may call it a ‘sentence construction error’ – and I would agree with them. There are several errors that make up a ‘sentence construction’ or a semantic error. What we are dealing with here, is a specific error. It’s the ‘order of adjective’ that’s amiss.

In any sentence where there are more adjectives than one, the writer needs to follow the order of adjectives. On second thoughts – even if there’s just one adjective – there is something worth remembering – it always precedes the noun (Only poets are excused). If you look at the first example – I wrote ‘a tall boy’ and not ‘a boy tall’. To a grammarian, the sentence looks like Article + Adjective + Noun.

Now let’s get back to the topic – adjectives follow a specific order and this is how it looks:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Quantity	Quality	Size	Shape	Age	Colour	Origin	Material	Purpose

Here are a few examples to elucidate the point:

Order	Example 1
Quantity	–
Quality	Shiny
Size	–
Shape	–
Age	New
Colour	Red
Origin	–
Material	–
Purpose	–
Noun	Ball
Final:	(I gave him) A shiny new red ball.

Order	Example 2
Quantity	–
Quality	Nice
Size	Big
Shape	–
Age	–
Colour	Black
Origin	–
Material	–
Purpose	Sports
Noun	Car
Final:	(Jack has) A nice big black sports car (in his garage)

Order	Example 3
Quantity	Two
Quality	–
Size	–
Shape	–
Age	New
Colour	–
Origin	Egyptian
Material	Cotton
Purpose	–
Noun	Shirts
Final:	(Those are) The two new Egyptian cotton shirts (I gifted him)

Order	Example 4
Quantity	Three
Quality	Experienced
Size	–
Shape	–
Age	Old
Colour	–
Origin	British
Material	–
Purpose	–
Noun	Sailors
Final:	(He was the eldest among the) three experienced old British sailors.

So, the next time you end up making a sentence with multiple adjectives – do remember the above rules and examples.

Hasta la próxima – have a nice day!!!