Adjectives: Word order

UNIT 91 Adjectives: Word order (''a nice new house'') After verbs (''Do you feel tired?'')

A.   Sometimes we use two or more adjectives together:

• Tom lives in a nice new house

• In the kitchen there was a beautiful large round wooden table.

Adjectives like new/large/round/wooden are fact adjectives. They give us objective information about something (age, size, color, etc.). Adjectives like nice/beautiful are opinion adjectives. They tell us what someone thinks of something.

B.   Sometimes there are two or more fact adjectives. Very often (but not always) we put fact adjectives in this order:
     1                        2                            3                          4                                    5
how big?-----how old?-----what color?----where from? ---- what is it made of?------NOUN

a tall young man (1-2)

a large wooden table (1- 5)

big blue eyes (1 3)

an old Russian song (2 4)

a small black plastic bag (1- 3 5)

an old white cotton shirt (2-3-5)

Adjectives of size and length (big/small/tall/short/long, etc.) usually go before adjectives of shape and width (round/fat/thin/slim/wide, etc.):

• a large round table

• a tall thin woman 

• a long narrow street

C.   We also use adjectives after some verbs, especially be/get/become:

• Are you tired?

• Be careful!

• I'm getting hungry.

We also use adjectives after: feel   smell    taste    sound    seem    look:

• Do you feel tired?

• Dinner smells good.

• This coffee tastes strong.

• Tom sounded angry when I spoke to him on the phone.

• Your friend seems very nice.

But after other verbs you must use an adverb

• Drive carefully! (not drive careful)

• Susan plays the piano very well. (not plays very good)

• Tom shouted at me angrily. (not shouted angry)

Look  We use an adjective after look when it means seem:

• Tom looked sad when I saw him

But after look at we use an adverb:

• Tom looked at me sadly. (not looked at me sad)