What is an adjective?
–A word that describes a noun.
–Example:
–A fast bike
–A blue pen
–A nice person
–A smart student
–An old house
Put the following adjectives in
a sentence: fast – blue – american – nice – big – old
Put the following adjectives in
a sentence: fast – blue – american – nice – big – old
My brother has a … bike.
My brother has a nice big old
blue american fast bike.
If we don’t want to emphasise any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:
order
|
relating to
|
examples
|
1
|
opinion
|
unusual, lovely, beautiful
|
2
|
size
|
big, small, tall
|
3
|
physical quality
|
thin, rough, untidy
|
4
|
shape
|
round, square, rectangular
|
5
|
age
|
young, old, youthful
|
6
|
colour
|
blue, red, pink
|
7
|
origin
|
Dutch, Japanese, Turkish
|
8
|
material
|
metal, wood, plastic
|
9
|
type
|
general-purpose, four-sided, U-shaped
|
10
|
purpose
|
cleaning, hammering, cooking
|
Examples:
It was made of a 1strange, 6green, 8metallic material.
It’s a 2long, 4narrow, 8plastic brush.
Panettone is a 4round, 7Italian, 9bread-like Christmas cake.
Here are some invented examples of longer adjective phrases. A noun phrase which included all these types would be extremely rare.
She was a 1beautiful, 2tall, 3thin, 5young, 6black-haired, 7Scottish woman.
What an 1amazing, 2little, 5old, 7Chinese cup and saucer
Textbook activity:
