The Secret 'Royal Order' You Unconsciously Follow When Using Adjectives!

Posted on Apr 30, 2026
tl;dr: You unknowingly follow a 'Royal Order of Adjectives' when describing things in English (e.g., Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, Purpose). This is why 'a big old red car' sounds natural, but 'a red old big car' sounds strange, even though it's not a rule anyone taught you!

Alright, so you know how sometimes you just know something sounds right, even if you can’t explain why? Like, if you’re describing a house, you’d probably say a ’lovely old red brick house’ and not a ‘red brick old lovely house’, right? It just feels wrong. Well, guess what? You’re actually following a secret, unspoken rule of the English language that almost every native speaker inherently knows, but probably no one ever taught you in school!

It’s often playfully called the ‘Royal Order of Adjectives’, and it dictates that adjectives generally follow a specific sequence before a noun. You do it without even thinking! The commonly accepted order goes something like this:

  1. Opinion (e.g., beautiful, ugly, lovely, strange)
  2. Size (e.g., big, small, tiny, huge)
  3. Age (e.g., old, new, ancient, young)
  4. Shape (e.g., round, square, triangular, oval)
  5. Color (e.g., red, blue, green, golden)
  6. Origin (e.g., French, American, lunar, earthy)
  7. Material (e.g., wooden, metallic, plastic, silk)
  8. Purpose (e.g., sleeping bag, hiking boots, writing desk)

So, when you say ‘a big old red car’, you’re naturally putting size (big) before age (old) before color (red). If you tried to say ‘a red old big car’, it would sound really weird to your ear, even though grammatically, it’s not technically ‘wrong’ in a strict sense. It’s just not how we say it!

This isn’t a hard-and-fast grammatical law written in stone by ancient linguists; it’s more like a strong, subconscious preference that has evolved over time in the English language. It’s one of those amazing quirks that shows just how complex and intuitive our brains are when it comes to language, allowing us to perfectly arrange descriptions without ever having to look up a rulebook. Pretty neat, huh? It’s like a secret handshake of English speakers!