Page 210 - English Grammar in Use

Unit
99 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 summer holiday
an interesting young man
delicious hot vegetable soup
a beautiful large round wooden table

B Sometimes we use two or more fact adjectives together. Usually (not always) we put fact adjectives
in this order:
3 4 5
1 2
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)

Adverbs ➜ Units 100–101 Comparative (cheaper etc.) ➜ Units 105–107
198 Superlative (cheapest etc.) ➜ Unit 108