30h. Order of cumulative adjectives
30hPlace cumulative adjectives in an appropriate order.
Adjectives usually come before the nouns they modify and may also come after linking verbs. (See 46d and 47b.)
Cumulative adjectives, which cannot be joined by the word and or separated by commas, must come in a particular order. If you use cumulative adjectives before a noun, see the chart on this page. The chart is only a guide; don’t be surprised if you encounter exceptions. (See also 33d.)
Order of cumulative adjectives
| first | article or other noun marker a, an, the, her, Joe’s, two, many, some |
| evaluative word attractive, dedicated, delicious, ugly, disgusting | |
| size large, enormous, small, little | |
| length or shape long, short, round, square | |
| age new, old, young, antique | |
| color yellow, blue, crimson | |
| nationality French, Peruvian, Vietnamese | |
| religion Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim | |
| material silver, walnut, wool, marble | |
| last | noun/adjective tree (as in tree house), kitchen (as in kitchen table) |
the noun modified house, coat, bicycle, bread, woman, coin
My large blue wool coat is in the attic.
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- Multilingual/ESL > Exercises: 30–8 and 30–9
- Multilingual/ESL > LearningCurve: Sentence structure for multilingual writers