Rose tea

A red beautiful rose?

No! A beautiful red rose. It’s the symbol of England.

A hot nice cup of tea?

No, a nice hot cup of tea, which tastes even better with a delicious English scone.

Probably the phrases ‘red beautiful rose’ and ‘hot nice cup of tea’ sound strange to you. They seem really weird to me. It’s because the adjective ‘beautiful’ comes before the adjective ‘red’, not after. And the same with ‘nice’ before ‘hot’, not after.

So you can see that adjectives have a certain order. When there is only one adjective for example ‘red rose’, then there is no problem, but when there are two or three or more adjectives then they should go in a certain order.

Here is a guide:

number / opinion / size, temperature etc / colour / origin / material / purpose

So you could say ‘three beautiful big red home-made artificial decorative roses’, if you really wanted.

I should stress that this is a guide, not a rule. Some people use a slightly different order, some people put adjectives in the ‘wrong’ order for emphasis, and some people just don’t care. But, if you follow the guide, then everyone will be sure to understand you, and will not think you are weird.

By the way, have you ever tried rose tea? If you haven’t, don’t! It’s one awful cold pink American leafy health drink.

Advertisement