Adjectives: a nice new house, you look tired
A Sometimes we use two or more adjectives together:
My brother 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 information about age,
size, colour etc.
Adjectives like nice/beautiful are opinion adjectives. They tell us what the speaker thinks of
something or somebody.
Opinion adjectives usually go before fact adjectives.
opinion fact
a nice long young hot summer holiday
an interesting large round wooden man
delicious vegetable soup
a beautiful table
B Sometimes we use two or more fact adjectives together. Usually (not always) we put fact
adjectives
in this1order: 2 3 4 5
how big? how old? what where what is it NOUN
colour? from? made of?
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 girl a long narrow street
When there are two or more colour adjectives, we use and:
a black and white dress a red, white and green flag This does not usually happen with other
adjectives before a noun:
a long black dress (not a long and black dress)
C We use adjectives after be/get/become/seem:
Be careful!
I’m tired and I’m getting hungry.
As the film went on, it became more and more boring. Your friend seems very nice.
We also use adjectives to say how somebody/something looks, feels, sounds, tastes or
smells: You look tired. / I feel tired. / She sounds tired.
The dinner smells good. This tea tastes a bit strange.
But to say how somebody does something you must use an adverb (see Units 100–101):
Drive carefully! (not Drive careful)
Suzanne plays the piano very well. (not plays … very good)
D We say ‘the first two days’, ‘the next few weeks’, ‘the last ten minutes’ etc. :
I didn’t enjoy the first two days of the course. (not the two first days) They’ll
be away for the next few weeks. (not the few next weeks)
Exercises
Put the adjectives in brackets in the correct position.
1 a beautiful table (wooden / round) a beautiful round wooden table
2 an unusual gold ring (gold)
3 a beautiful old house (beautiful)
4 red gloves leather (leather)
5 an Old American film (old)
6 tiny pink flowers (tiny)
7 a thin long face (thin)
8 big black clouds (black)
9 a lovely sunny day (lovely)
10 an ugly dress yellow (yellow)
11 a long wide avenue (long)
12 new important ideas (new)
13 a new green sweater (green / nice)
14 a metal small black box (black / small)
15 beautiful long black hair (black / beautiful)
16 interesting an old painting French (interesting / French)
17 a red large umbrella yellow (red / yellow)
18 a big black cat (black / white / fat)
Put in the correct word.
1 This tea tastes a bit strange . (strange / strangely)
2 I usually feel happy when the sun is shining. (happy / happily)
3 The children were playing happily in the garden. (happy / happily)
4 You look Terrible ! Are you all right? (terrible / terribly)
5 There’s no point in doing a job if you don’t do it properly . (proper / properly)
6 The soup tastes well . Can you give me the recipe? (good / well)
7 Please hurry up! You’re always so slow. (slow / slowly)
8 A customer in the restaurant was behaving badly. (bad / badly)
9 The customer became violent when the manager asked him to leave. (violent / violently)
