Order of Adjectives How to Remember and Teach in a Fun Way

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Adjectives is one essential content and function words and remember the royal order of adjectives in English and how to use them in sentences using this simple mnemonic device example ODASCOM, that stands for:-

List of Royal Order of Adjectives
in English with Examples

• Opinion
• Dimension
• Age
• Size
• Color
• Origin
• Material

Opinion: Mostly, Opinion Adjectives are Personality Adjectives. Opinion words are the good example adjectives to describe a person, or a thing. It shows beliefs, judgments, attitudes, and outlook of a noun.


Here is a list of adjectives to describe a person that exhibits opinion: Interesting, boring, happy, attractive, appealing, fascinating, motivating, remarkable, exciting,
inspiring, encouraging, and entertaining.

Examples: an interesting book, a boring lecture

Descriptive Adjectives of Dimension: Dimension shows measurement such as height, length, width and breadth of something. It is also used in many compound adjectives such as big-toed, thin-coated, large-headed etc. More examples of adjectives of dimension include: huge, gigantic, large, vast, and oversize.

Example: a small banana, a big elephant

A list of Adjectives of Age: Every language under earth has descriptive words for age at its minute detail. Words such as young, old, new, fresh are some of the most commonly adjectives in English. These adjectives are also prominently seen in fairy tales, short stories and novels. Here is a list of adjectives that are based on age: youthful, juvenile, immature, childish, babyish, infantile, and old.

Example: a new car, a modern building, an ancient ruin

Good Adjectives of Shape: The word, “Shape” differs from the word, “Dimension” in that it describes the outline or contour of a noun. Dimension illustrates the aspect of a noun. Here is a list to describe an object: round, oval, square, triangle, and rectangle.

Example: a square box, an oval mask, a round ball

Adjectives Examples of Color: Especially, poets are attracted towards colors. this describing adjective is not only used in almost all field of human interest. VIBGYOR is a mnemonic that reminds seven rainbow colors such as Voilet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red.

Example: a pink hat, a blue book, a black coat

Adjectives to Describe Yourself in the Origin’s angle: Though the word, “Origin” indicates nationality, caste or a community, it is one of the commonly used adjectives to describe people to portray their nationality. Describing words of origin include Indian, American, Canadian, Mexican, and Russian.

Example: some Italian shoes, a Canadian town, an American car

Nice Adjectives that Describe Materials: These descriptive adjectives include anything that is tangible--objects that can be touched. Materials include plastic, wood, soil, glass, paper, wool, and cloth

Example: a wooden box, a woolen sweater, a plastic toy

To learn the order of adjectives, one must remember two rules:
1. The sequence should be in the same order of ODASCOM: "Old wooden blue twig" is non-standard English phrase has the order is age, material and color. A revised phrase will be "Old blue wooden twig".
2. Care must be taken not to include more than three adjectives at a time in a phrase:
Phrases like "big old wooden blue twig" is considered non standard in English language.

Good verbal communication should not only be rich of vocabulary but also follow certain standards, using adjectives in the right order is important. Remember this simple mnemonic to recall the royal order of persuasive adjectives list