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English has a fixed adjective order: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose.
Side-by-side comparison
In English, adjectives follow a fixed order before the noun: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose. Mnemonic: Osascomp.
She wore a beautiful long red silk dress to the ceremony.
They bought a small rectangular wooden table for the kitchen.
He drives an old reliable blue Japanese car to work every day.
The most common mistake is changing that order; for example, placing color before size. To a native speaker it sounds off even if they understand what you mean.
Saying 'a red beautiful dress' sounds wrong; the correct order is 'a beautiful red dress'.
'A Italian vintage small car' is wrong; it should be 'a small vintage Italian car'.
Native speakers notice wrong adjective order immediately, even if they cannot explain why.
Common mistake
Beyond color and size, the slips usually involve origin and material: it is "an Italian leather bag", not "a leather Italian bag". And opinion comes first: "a lovely small cottage", not "a small lovely cottage". If something sounds odd, the order is almost always swapped.
Trick to remember it
- •Remember OSASCOMP: Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, Purpose.
- •If you only remember one rule: size comes before color.
Quick rule
- •The order is Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose.
- •Size always comes before color.
Did you know?
In 2016, an article in BBC Culture about English adjective order went viral because it revealed the OSASCOMP rule to native speakers who had never learned it, yet whose intuition applied it perfectly. The most common reaction was astonishment: "How do I follow a rule I did not know existed?" One of the clearest examples of how implicit grammar operates in the human brain.
Practise what you learned
Exercise 1 · Pick the right one
Which phrase has the adjectives in the correct order?
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
She was wearing a _____ dress at the party.
Exercise 3 · Form the word
Related word pairs
The comparative compares two things; the superlative designates the extreme in a group of three or more.
'Which' is used for things, animals, and concepts; 'who' is used for people.
'A' is used before consonant sounds; 'an' is used before vowel sounds.
'A lot of' works for countable and uncountable; 'many' only for countable; 'much' only for uncountable.
Bryan López
Founder of SpeakUP Academy