Adjective Order in English

Learning how to arrange adjectives in English can be tricky. But in general, we follow a particular order. That’s how adjective order works. In this guide, we’ll explore the rules that help you place adjectives in the perfect order.

Order of Adjectives

Did you know that in English, we usually say “a big red balloon,” not “a red big balloon”? It sounds more natural because of the adjective order rule.

When using more than one adjective, we usually follow a particular word order. Here’s a diagram that lists all the order of adjectives.

Imagine building a tower. Each block must go in the right spot. Think of it the same. For example, the adjective “big” comes before “red” in the sentence “a big red balloon”. This is because it follows the order of adjectives.

A Sentence with All Adjectives of Order

Obviously, we’re never going to use all the adjectives in one sentence. That would be too descriptive. But if we did, here’s an example sentence that uses this order:

“She bought a lovely small old round blue Italian leather riding saddle.”

As you can see, the adjectives in this sentence follow a particular order.

The general order is as follows:

Determiner – Articles (a, an, the), numbers, possessives (my, your), demonstratives (this, that)
Opinion – Adjectives that express what someone thinks about something (beautiful, boring, delicious)
Size – Adjectives that describe how big or small something is (big, small, tall)
Age – Adjectives that tell us how old something or someone is (old, young, new)
Shape – Describes the shape of something (round, square, oval)
Color – Describes the color (red, blue, green)
Origin – Tells us where something is from (American, Victorian, Martian)
Material – What something is made from (wooden, metal, cotton)
Purpose – Describes what something is used for, often ending in “-ing” (sleeping bag, riding boots, racing car)

In this example, “She bought a lovely small old round blue Italian leather riding saddle.”:

Determiner: a
Opinion: lovely
Size: small
Age: old
Shape: round
Color: blue
Origin: Italian
Material: leather
Purpose: riding (modifying “saddle”)

As ridiculous as it sounds, this sentence correctly follows the order of adjectives in a sentence. This order tends to sound most natural to native English speakers. Any deviations from it can make a sentence feel awkward or more difficult to understand.