Some general notes
Not everyone thinks this system works as strictly as I've been suggesting. In English Grammar in Use (Cambridge), Raymond Murphy suggests that very often (but not always) we put adjectives into a specific order.
| opinion | fact |
| opinion | how big? | how old? | what colour? | where from? | what is it made of? |
He also makes the point, not covered by our system, that adjectives of size and length (big, small, tall, short, long etc, usually go before adjectives of shape and width (round, fat, this, slim, wide etc), so a long wide room rather than a wide long room.
In Practical English Usage (Oxford), Michael Swan says that the subject is complicated, and that different grammars disagree about the details (as we'll see in a moment). But he gives 'some of the important ones:'
| colour | origin | material | purpose |
He then says that other adjectives usually come before these, and that 'adjectives of size, length and height often come first'.
A note on age and shape
There is some disagreement as to which comes first - age or shape, and some authorities put shape together with size. At the British Council, for example, shape comes before age, whereas at the ECL Study Zone at the University of Victoria, age comes before shape.
To me, age before shape sounds more natural, and this seems to be supported by these results at Google Search (these are real figures, not Google front page numbers, which are often meaningless)
| ancient round houses | 45 | round ancient houses | 3 |
| old square box | 280 | square old box | 14 |
| new oval table | 48 | oval new table | 3 |
| old round stone | 97 | round old stone | 40 |
| new rectangular container | 25 | rectangular new container | 3 |
As you can see, this combination doesn't come up very often, so is not really worth worrying about too much.
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