Adjective Order: The English Rule You Obey Without Thinking

Why does “the brick old house” sound weird but “the old brick house” is fine?

So many grammar rules are difficult to remember and even trickier to perfect, but this one is pretty much automatic for most native English speakers. In fact, if English is your first language, you probably never even learned this rule—but you still know it and use it all the time.

The Rule

Adjectives describe a noun or pronoun, and you can use pretty much as many adjectives as you want.

“The twelve gorgeous new gold candlesticks gleamed from the mantle.”

“The delicious old white Italian cheese was sitting on the table.”

But if you have a bunch of adjectives before a noun, how do you know what order to put them in? You probably just automatically put them in the order that “sounds” the best. For example, most people can tell that the adjectives are out of order in this sentence:

She knocked on the wooden brown ancient door.

The adjectives should be in this order:

She knocked on the ancient brown wooden door.

The correct sentence is following the rules of adjective order. Although grammar books differ with some of the specifics, most agree that adjectives should follow approximately this order: (1) determiner, (2) quantity, (3) opinion, (4) size, (5) age, (6) shape, (7) color, (8) origin, (9) material.

Note that—apart from quantity—the earlier adjectives have to do with opinion and more subjective features, and the later ones are more factual. People might have different opinions about something and might call it a different approximate size or age, but you can usually find a definitive, objective answer for something’s origin and material.

Let’s test out this rule:

I picked up the unique (3 – opinion) medieval (5 – age) green (7-color) book.

She owned a gigantic (4 – size) grey (7 – color) Irish (8 – origin) Wolfhound.

So what happens if we switch it up?

He chose the plastic (9 – material) medium (4 – size) ugly (3 – opinion) phone case.

That sentence sounds awkward because the adjectives aren’t in the correct order. It’s hard to place exactly why it sounds awkward, but you can tell the difference once they’re corrected.

He chose the ugly (3 – opinion) medium (4 – size) plastic (9 – material) phone case.

But…Why?

This is going to be a short section. I could not find any real reason for this rule. Why do we like our adjectives in a particular order? The answer is that no one really seems to know. It sort of just happened and now we’re stuck with it.

Do I Need a Comma?

When you have a bunch of adjectives, you sometimes do and sometimes don’t need commas separating them. The rule is this: When the adjectives come from the same category, they DO need to be separated by commas. When the adjectives come from different categories, they DON’T need to be separated by commas.

Commas that come from the same category are called coordinate adjectives. You can test out whether you have coordinate or noncoordinate adjectives by trying to put the word “and” between them. If it sounds OK, they’re likely coordinate. If not, they’re probably noncoordinate.

I drove to school in a smelly ugly car.

In this example, “and” works just fine between “smelly” and “ugly”:

I drove to school in a smelly and ugly car.

So if we want to leave “and” out, we need to insert a comma to replace it:

I drove to school in a smelly, ugly car.

“Smelly” and “ugly” are both opinion adjectives (category 3), so they do need a comma between them.

My grandpa always wore an old flannel shirt.

Let’s try out “and”:

My grandpa always wore an old and flannel shirt.

That sounds strange, so we’ll leave out “and.” We also won’t use a comma. “Old” and “flannel” are in different categories (“old” is age, and “flannel” is material), so they are noncoordinate adjectives.

It’s fun to play with these grammar rules that you might not know but still rarely break. If you have any questions about adjective order, drop a comment or send me a DM on Instagram (@strictly__speaking with two underscores)!

Sources:

• “Adjectives: Order .” Cambridge Dictionary. Accessed September 10, 2024. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/adjectives-order.
• Einsohn, Amy. The Copyeditor’s Handbook. 3rd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: Univ of California Pr, 2011.
• Kramer, Lindsay. “Adjective Order in English.” Grammarly Blog, July 14, 2021. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/adjective-order/.