4. ADJECTIVE
PLACEMENT
ELEMENTARY
4. ADJECTIVE PLACEMENT
ELEMENTARY
Order of adjectives in a phrase
• When we describe things we normally use adjectives. Sometimes we use two or
more adjectives together:
It’s a horrible tall ancient cylindrical red brick lighthouse.
“horrible” is an opinion adjective. It describes what someone thinks about a
person or a thing.
“tall”, “ancient”, “cylindrical”, “red” are fact adjectives. They describe facts
such as size, shape, colour, etc.
Opinion adjectives go before fact adjectives.
• When we use two or more fact adjectives together we usually (but not always!)
put them in this order:
1. SHAPE&SIZE
... a large
... a small
2. AGE
old
new
3. COLOUR
4. ORIGIN
black
American
*black and white Italian
5. MATERIAL
leather
wooden
jacket.
chair.
• *In case there are two or more colour adjectives together, we use a comma and
and before last colour adjective:
... a black and white dress
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... a blue, black and yellow flag