Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, United States with a historic stone building

Study Resource: Order of English adjectives

By: revel arroway

Here is the order for English adjectives:

opinion

size

qualities

shape

age

color

material

type

purpose

noun

Examples of adjectives in each group:

Type of adjective
Description of category
Examples

Opinion

What you think about a thing

favorite, best, worst, greatest, good, bad, cool…

Size

How big is it?

big, small, tiny, enormous, short, huge, long, heavy…

Appearance, personality, or other physical qualities

Does it look nice? What is its texture like? How does it behave? What does it taste like? How does it sound? What does it smell like?

beautiful, ugly, fuzzy, smooth, shiny, sharp, bright, dull, wrinkly, messy, neat, sweet, round, hot, silly, charming, mean, brave, noisy, silent…

Shape (sometimes size)

What shape is it? Some size adjectives (ex: little, narrow, etc.) also give information about shape.

round, flat, little, square, fat, straight, narrow, wide, curvy, 3D…

Age

How old is it?

new, old, young, old-fashioned, recent, teenage, modern…

Color

What color is it?

red, brown, blue, dust-colored, rainbow, colorful…

Material

What is it made of?

plastic, metal, wool, woven, gold, paper, polyester, cloth…

Type

What kind of thing is it? A lot of these “adjectives” are actually nouns or verbs used to describe something and many of them have a hyphen (-).

button-up (shirt), ball-point (pen), ham (sandwich), Italian (government)...

Purpose

What is it used for?

wedding (dress), drawing (pencils), business (address), towing (company), teaching (degree), reference (book)...

To embark on your next language adventure, join Mango on social!

Ready to take the next step?

The Mango Languages learning platform is designed to get you speaking like a local quickly and easily.

Mango app open on multiple devices

Learning Activities

Elevate your language-learning journey to new heights with our interactive activities.