Adjective Before Noun

We sometimes use more than one adjective before the noun:

• I like big black dogs.
• She was wearing a beautiful long red dress.

What is the correct order for two or more adjectives?

1. The general order is: opinion, fact:

• a nice French car (not a French nice car)

("Opinion" is what you think about something. "Fact" is what is definitely true about something.)

2. The normal order for fact adjectives is size, age, shape, colour, material, origin:

• a big, old, square, black, wooden Chinese table

3. Determiners usually come first, even though they are fact adjectives:

• articles (a, the)
• possessives (my, your...)
• demonstratives (this, that...)
• quantifiers (some, any, few, many...)
• numbers (one, two, three)

When we want to use two colour adjectives, we join them with "and":

• Newspapers are usually black and white.
• She was wearing a long, blue and yellow dress.

The rules on this page are for the normal, "natural" order of adjectives. But these rules are not rigid, and you may sometimes wish to change the order for emphasis. Consider the following conversations: Conversation 1 A "I want to buy a round table." B "Do you want a new round table or an old round table?" Conversation 2 A "I want to buy an old table". B "Do you want a round old table or a square old table?"

Adjective After Verb >>