Adjective order (by Catherine Chapman, BBC)
When we use two or more
adjectives together to describe a noun, the order we put them in is quite
important. For example, we don't usually say an old
Indian beautiful carpet. It sounds much better
say a beautiful old Indian carpet.
Когда при одном существительном используются два и более прилагательных, то
их порядок имеет существенное значение. Например, обычно мы не говорим
"старый индийский прекрасный ковёр". Гораздо лучше сказать
"прекрасный старый индийский ковёр"
As a general rule, adjectives
are usually placed in this order: opinion > size > quality > age >
shape > colour > participle forms > origin > material type >
purpose
Общие принципы расположения прилагательных таковы : мнение > размер
> качество > возраст> форма,очертания> цвет> причастия в роли
прилагательных> происхождение (нациоанальность) > тип материала >
назначение
The phrase a beautiful
old Indian carpet follows these guidelines:
Выражение "прекрасный старый индийский ковёр" соответствует этим
общим принципам:
1
|
4
|
8
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||
quality
качество
|
age
возраст
|
origin
происхождение
|
noun
сущ.
|
|
a
|
beautiful
|
old
|
Indian
|
carpet
|
So if you wanted to add red and
green to the phrase a beautiful old Indian carpet, you would put it between old and Indian like this:
Например, если вы хотите в выражение "прекрасный старый индийский
ковёр" добавить "красный или зелёный", то цвет надо вставить
между "старый" и "индийский"
1
|
4
|
6
|
8
|
||
opinion
|
age
|
colour
цвет
|
origin
|
noun
|
|
a
|
beautiful
|
old
|
red and green
|
Indian
|
carpet
|
It sometimes helps to remember the order of
adjective if you consider that adjectives whose meaning is closely, or
permanently, connected to the noun are placed nearer to it in the sentence. So
in this phrase: a large comfortable wooden chair – wooden has a very close connection with chair .
Иногда полезно помнить, что прилагательные, постоянно или более тесно
связанные со своим существительным, располагаются ближе к нему. Так, в
выражении "большой удобный деревянный стул" слово
"деревянный" означает наиболее постоянное свойство существительного
стул (тип материала):
2
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3
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10
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size
|
quality
|
material type
тип материала
|
noun
|
|
a
|
large
|
comfortable
|
wooden
|
chair
|
Here are some more examples: Вот ещё примеры:
"новый улучшенный рецепт" и "старомодный романтический ужин
(обед) при свечах на двоих"
3
|
7
|
||
quality
|
participle
|
noun
|
|
a
|
new
|
improved
|
recipe
|
1
|
3
|
10
|
||
opinion
|
quality
|
type
|
noun
|
|
an
|
old-fashioned
|
romantic
|
candle-lit
|
dinner for two
|
Sometimes we can use but between adjectives, especially if their meanings seem contradictory.
Иногда между прилагательными может присутствовать but (= но), разделяющее "противоречивые" прилагательные:
"небольшой, но вкусный обед (приём пищи)"
2
|
3
|
|||
size
|
quality
|
noun
|
||
a
|
small
|
but
|
tasty
|
meal
|
Order of Adjectives
- “The small dog
jumped over the white fence.”
Small is an adjective that describes the noun dog, and white is
an adjective that describes the noun fence.
Adjectives add
to the richness of our descriptions of people and things. They allow the
listener or the reader to paint a mental picture of the person or object that
is being described to them.
Think about some
adjectives that you know. Some of the most common words are adjectives like good, bad, young, old, big,and small.
Each of these
adjectives serves a purpose by describing a different aspect of the noun. Good and bad give
an opinion of
the noun, old and young tell us about the noun’s age, while big and small describe
the noun’s size.
The good news is
that adjectives are relatively simple in English. In some languages, the
adjective changes its form depending on whether the noun it modifies is
singular/plural, or feminine/masculine. In English, we don’t have those
complications: the adjective always remains the same.
When we speak or write, we don’t want to bore our
listener or reader with repetitive sentences. Imagine a
description like this:
- “He is a tall man.
He is a healthy man. He is a young man.”
You would be so bored that you wouldn’t want to listen
to another word. Luckily, we have another option. We can make such a
description more concise by using all three adjectives in one sentence:
- “He is a tall
healthy young man.”
Using more than one adjective in a sentence makes our
writing and speech richer and more concise. However, this is also where we have
to be careful, because certain adjectives appear in a certain order. For
example, in the description above, which would be more correct: tall healthy young man, or young healthy tall man?
The answer is tall healthy young man, but why?
What is
the order of adjectives?
In English, we
generally have a specific order of
adjectives (although this can sometimes be flexible). Without this
order, the sentence sounds unnatural, as in “young
healthy tall man.” To avoid unnatural-sounding sentences, we group
adjectives by type, and we try to use them in this order:
- 1.
Opinion
- 2.
Measurements
- 3.
Shape
- 4.
Condition
- 5.
Age
- 6.
Color
- 7.
Pattern
- 8.
Origin
- 9.
Material
- 10.
Purpose
Obviously we never have a sentence that uses 10
adjectives to describe one noun; in fact, it would be rare to find a sentence
that uses more than three adjectives to modify the same noun. We do need to
know a little about each type, though, so that when we need to use two or three
adjectives in a row, we’ll use them in the right order.
First, let’s
look at each type of adjective in detail. After that we’ll see some examples of
sentences that string two or more adjectives together.
Types of
Adjectives
Opinion
Adjectives of opinion always come first before any other factual
descriptions of the noun. There are two types of opinion adjectives. The first
are general opinion
adjectives and can be used with any kind of noun, whether it is a person,
place, or thing.
Some of the most common general opinion adjectives
are:
- good
- bad
- lovely
- strange
- beautiful
- nice
The second type are specific opinion adjectives.
These are adjectives that can only be used with particular types of nouns. For
example:
- People and animals: intelligent,
friendly, unfriendly, hard-working
- Buildings
and furniture: comfortable,
uncomfortable
- Food: flavorful,
tasty, delicious
If you want to use a general opinion adjective and a
specific opinion adjective in the same sentence, the general opinion adjective
should come first. For example:
- “Isn’t Maria a lovely,
intelligent girl?”
Lovely is a general opinion adjective
because it can be used with any noun. Therefore, it comes first. Intelligent is a specificopinion adjective because
it can only be used with people and animals, so it comes second.
Measurements
Adjectives of measurement can tell us about the size, height, length, and
weight of a person or a thing. Some of the most common adjectives
of measurements are:
- big
- small
- tiny
- huge
- enormous
- short
- tall
- long
- heavy
- light
If we were to use more than one adjective of
measurement in a sentence, we would normally use the adjective that mentions
the general size first, and the other measurements after. For
example:
·
“He’s a big,
tall man.” (correct)
·
“He’s a tall,
big man.” (incorrect)
·
“I bought a huge,
heavy table for the kitchen.” (correct)
·
“I bought a heavy,
huge table for the kitchen.” (incorrect)
Shape
Adjectives
of shape usually
describe objects. The most common are round,
square, rectangular, triangular, and oval.
However, there are many words that describe the shapes of objects that we see
all around us but that are used less frequently. For example:
- bent
- concave
- convex
- flat
- pointy
- straight
- twisted
- symmetrical
Condition
Adjectives of condition tell us whether something is in a good or bad
state. These are generally adjectives that describe a temporary state of the
person or thing in the sentence. Some common adjectives of physical condition
are clean, dirty, wet,and dry. Emotions like happy,
sad, angry, scared, and excited are
also adjectives of condition, as are general states such as rich, powerful, shy, or clever.”
Age
Adjectives
of age can
describe how old a person, place, or thing is. We have to be careful with
adjectives of age, because some are used to describe only people, some are used
only for things, and a few are used for both people and things. For
example:
- To describe people: young, youthful, elderly
- To
describe things: new, antique
- To
describe both: old, ancient
Color
Adjectives of color include the names of particular colors
themselves, such as yellow, red, and blue, but they can also be approximate colors,
like reddish or yellowish, or even properties of colors, such
as transparent, translucent or opaque.
If you use both
a color and a property of a color in one sentence, the property should come
first, and the color after, immediately before the noun. For
example:
- “A translucent, yellow cup.”
- “An opaque, blue curtain.”
Pattern
Adjectives of pattern can describe patterns of materials or even of
animals. Some of the most common pattern adjectives are checked, polka-dot, striped, plaid, and flowered.
Origin
Adjectives of origin describe where something comes from. Usually,
these are adjectives that refer to a specific country or region.
When we use a
country adjective, like American, British,
Indian, or Korean, note that
we capitalize the adjective. Adjectives of origin that refer to a general
region, such as eastern or southern, are not capitalized.
Material
Adjectives of material tell us what something is made
of. For
example:
- “A wooden table.”
- “A plastic chair.”
- “A steel railroad track.”
Purpose
Last in the order of adjectives are adjectives of purpose. They tell us what
something is for. For example:
- “A sleeping bag.”
- “A shopping cart.”
Now, let’s put all of this information about the
different types of adjectives together and see some examples of how it works
when we modify a noun with more than one adjective:
- “Don’t forget to bring your new striped jacket.”
This sentence has two adjective types: New is an adjective of age and striped is an adjective of pattern.
- “Yesterday my sister gave me a blue wool sweater.”
This sentence also has two adjective types: Blue is an adjective of color, and wool is an adjective of material.
- “I bought an enormous
rectangular Turkish rug on my vacation.”
This sentence includes three adjective types: Enormous is an adjective of measurement; rectangular is an adjective of shape; and Turkish is an adjective of origin (specifically
of a country, so it’s also capitalized).
We use and to link two adjectives of the same
type that describe separate parts of one object. For example:
- “The child was playing with a blue and red
plastic robot.
Blue and red are
two adjectives of color, joined by and.
They are followed by the adjective of material, plastic.
Sometimes a
series of adjectives follows a linking verb, like to
be. In this case, the last adjective is connected to the previous ones with
the word and. For
example:
- “The house is big, white, and wooden.”
Using commas with
adjectives
Last but not
least, we need to mention commas. You have probably noticed that in some of our
example sentences the adjectives are separated by commas, and in others they’re
not.
Coordinate adjectives
In general, we do use
commas between adjectives that describe the noun independently from one
another. For example:
- “I bought a heavy,
long table.”
Each of the above adjectives separately describes the
noun table; these are called coordinate adjectives,
and they are each separated by a comma.
One way that we can check if adjectives are coordinate
is by trying to switch around the order and see if the sentence still makes
sense. For
example:
- “I bought a long,
heavy table.”
The sentence still sounds correct, so we know that we
are looking at coordinate adjectives and that we need to use a comma. Another
way that we can check is by inserting the word and where
the comma would go:
- “I bought a heavy and long table.”
Again, the sentence still sounds correct, so we know
we are dealing with coordinate adjectives.
Cumulative adjectives
When adjectives build on each other to create a
complete description, we don’t separate
them with commas. These are called cumulative adjectives,
because their descriptions of the noun accumulate.
For
example:
- “I bought a black
wooden table.”
Black is describing wooden
table (not just table alone),
and so this sentence would sound strange if rearranged, like this:
- “I bought a wooden
black table.”
We can also try inserting and,
with the same result:
- “I bought a black and wooden table.”
The sentence doesn’t sound right either rearranged or
using the and test, so we know
that we are dealing with cumulative adjectives, and we should not separate them
with commas.
Exceptions
Finally, we
should remember that like with most grammar rules, the order of adjectives is
not fixed, and there are exceptions. We can do our best to keep adjectives in
their natural order, but we may encounter variations.