English Grammar Drills - Mark Lester 2009

Sequence of multiple true adjectives
2 Adjectives
Part 1 Noun Phrases

We often use two or three true adjectives to modify a single noun. For example, consider the fol­lowing phrase:

huge old white house

Here the adjectives huge, old, and white all modify the noun house.

When multiple true adjectives modify the same noun, there is a fixed left-to-right order to the adjectives based on their meaning. For example, we cannot change the order of the adjectives in the above example without being ungrammatical:

X huge white old house

X white huge old house

X white old huge house

X old huge white house

X old white huge house

Generalizing these examples to whole categories of adjectives, we can make the following rule about order of true adjectives based on meaning:

Size    Age   Color   Noun

large    old    dingy   apartment building

small    new    paisley   shirt

tiny    ancient   grey   car

Exercise 2.3

Rearrange the adjectives in the following phrases to put them into the correct sequence based on their meaning.