Adjective Order

There are 2 basic positions for adjectives:

beforethe noun
aftersome verbs (be, become, get, seem, look, feel, sound, smell, taste)

		adj. before noun			adj. after verb
1	I have a	big	dog.
2			Snow	is	white.

Adjective Before Noun

We often 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?

First of all, the general order is:

opinion, fact

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

a lovely new dress (not a new lovely dress)
a boring French film (not a French boring film)

The "normal" order for fact adjectivesis

size, shape, age, colour / origin / material / purpose

a small 18th-century French coffee table
a rectangular black wooden box

Determinersusually come first, even though some grammarians regard them as fact adjectives:

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

Note that when we want to use two colour adjectives, we join them with "and":

Many newspapers are black and white.
She was wearing a long, blue and yellow dress.

Here are some examples of adjective order:

	*adjectives*						*head noun*
*determiner*	*opinion adjectives*	*fact adjectives*
*determiner*	*opinion adjectives*	other	size, shape, age, colour	origin	material	purpose*
two	ugly		black			guard	dogs
a		well-known		Chinese			artist
a			small, 18th-century	French		coffee	table
your	fabulous		new			sports	car
a	lovely		pink and green	Thai	silk		dress
some			black	Spanish	leather	riding	boots
a			big black and white				dog
this		cheap			plastic	rain	coat
an			old		wooden	fishing	boat
my			new			tennis	racket
a	wonderful		15th-century	Arabic			poem

*often a noun used as an adjective

Adjective After Verb

An adjective can come after some verbs, such as: be, become, feel, get, look, seem, smell, sound

Even when an adjective comes after the verb and not before a noun, it always refers to and qualifies the subject of the clause, not the verb.

Look at the examples below: subject verb adjective

Ram is English.
Because she had to wait, she became impatient.
Is it getting dark?
The examination did not seem difficult.
Your friend looks nice.
This towel feels damp.
That new film doesn't sound very interesting.
Dinner smells good tonight.
This milk tastes sour.
It smells bad.

These verbs are "stative" verbs, which express a state or change of state, not "dynamic" verbs which express an action. Note that some verbs can be stative in one sense (she looks beautiful | it got hot), and dynamic in another (she looked at him | he got the money). The above examples do not include all stative verbs.

Note also that in the above structure (subject verb adjective), the adjective can qualify a pronoun since the subject may be a pronoun.

Grammar

Adjective Order

Grammar Title