Adjectives are essential words that describe nouns, providing details like size, colour, and opinion. They help us express ourselves more clearly and make our sentences more interesting.

In English, adjectives can be grouped into two main types: subjective and objective. Subjective adjectives reflect personal opinions or feelings — for example, calling a movie "amazing" or "boring" depends on individual taste. Objective adjectives, on the other hand, describe factual characteristics such as colour, size, or material. For instance, saying a table is "round" or "wooden" provides concrete information that doesn't change from person to person.

Let's look at examples of adjectives in English below:

• Subjective Adjectives: beautiful, interesting, amazing, terrible, delicious, etc.
• Objective Adjectives: small, blue, big, round, wooden, etc.

Subjective adjectives express personal opinions or feelings, so the same object can elicit different reactions from different people. For example: "The book is amazing!" you might say, while your friend thinks that the book is boring. On the other hand, objective adjectives describe factual characteristics that are not influenced by personal opinions. These include qualities like size, shape, or material, which can be measured or verified. For instance: The table is small and round. The size and shape of the table are factual details, regardless of whether we like it or not.

Depending on their formation, adjectives in English are divided into:

• Simple adjectives — consist only of the root, without prefixes or suffixes: good, bad, happy, sad, cold, hot;
• Derivative adjectives — formed by adding suffixes/prefixes to the root word: beautiful, harmless, personal, unfair, irregular;
• Compound adjectives — formed by combining two or more words that together acquire a new meaning: well-known, full-time, high-quality.

Based on their function and meaning, adjectives in English can be:

• Gradable —  these can vary in degree and have comparative and superlative forms:

• This rule is easy. That rule is easier. I know the easiest rule.
• This project is important. That project is more important. We are working on the most important project.

• Non-gradable (Absolute) —  these express absolute qualities and do not typically have comparative forms. For example: wooden, red, square, etc. 

There are three degrees of Comparison of Adjectives in English: 

• warm - warmer - the warmest
• hot - hotter - the hottest
• simple - simpler - the simplest
• happy - happier - the happiest
• important - more important - the most important
• expensive - more expensive - the most expensive

There are also a number of irregular adjectives that form degrees of comparison not according to the general rule:

• good — better — the best
• bad — worse — the worst
• far — farther / further — the farthest / the furthest
• little — less — the least
• many/much — more — the most

In addition, adjectives in English can be quantitative (first, some, every, etc.), possessive (my, your, his, her, its, our, their), demonstrative (this, that, these, those), and interrogative (which, what, whose).

In English, it's common to use multiple adjectives to describe a single noun. For example, you might say, "She wore a beautiful long red dress." Native speakers typically arrange these adjectives in a specific order without consciously thinking about it. However, for English learners, understanding the correct sequence is important because placing adjectives in the wrong order can make sentences sound awkward or confusing. To help with this, you can use the OSASCOMP rule, which stands for:

• Opinion (e.g., amazing, wonderful, terrible, beautiful)
• Size (e.g., big, small, tall, huge, tiny, large)
• Age (e.g., ancient, old, new, modern, young)
• Shape (e.g., square, round, flat, rectangular)
• Color (e.g., red, blueб pink, white)
• Origin (e.g., French, American, Japanese)
• Material (e.g., wooden, plastic, metal, silver) 
• Purpose (e.g., working, dining, sleeping, cutting)

By following this order, your descriptions will sound more natural to native English speakers.

Let's look at some examples to understand how to arrange multiple adjectives before a noun using the OSASCOMP rule:

• I have a wonderful yellow cup. (In this sentence, "wonderful" is an Opinion adjective, and "yellow" describes the Colour.)
• I have a wonderful small new round yellow French porcelain coffee cup. (Here, we've used 8 adjectives in the correct OSASCOMP order: Opinion (wonderful), Size (small), Age (new), Shape (round), Colour (yellow), Origin (French), Material (porcelain), and Purpose (coffee)).
• I have a wonderful small round coffee cup. (This example includes adjectives for Opinion, Size, Shape, and Purpose.)

It's important to note that possessive or quantitative adjectives, such as "my" or "two," typically come before other adjectives:

• I have two wonderful small round coffee cups.
• This is my lovely round Italian wooden coffee table.

When using multiple adjectives from the same category, like several Opinion adjectives, the order can be flexible:

• It was an interesting, beautiful, and inspiring story.
• It was a beautiful, interesting, and inspiring story.
• It was an inspiring, beautiful, and interesting story.

To practice constructing sentences with multiple adjectives, start with a simple noun phrase and gradually add adjectives from different OSASCOMP categories:

• A sports car.
• A fast sports car.
• A fast Italian sports car.
• A fast small Italian sports car.
• A fast small modern Italian sports car.
• A fast small modern red Italian sports car.

Regular practice with this method will help you internalize the correct adjective order, making your English sound more natural and fluent.

Read also: 

• Rules of reading in English
• How to quickly learn and memorize English words
• Selection of online English dictionaries and their useful features

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