Describing people – adjective order

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In this upper-intermediate Learn English Vocabulary podcast, Jack talks about adjectives you can use to describe people and the order that the adjectives are used.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Learn English Vocabulary. My name is Jack and I’m making this podcast for you to learn or revise English vocabulary. 

Introduction

Yesterday, I published a podcast for B1 learners with ways of agreeing and disagreeing. Today, the focus is describing people and the language will be suitable for B2 or upper-intermediate learners. 

I hope you find this podcast useful. If you do, please leave me a rating and a review as this will help other learners find these podcasts. 

Describing people

This podcast is called describing people – looks and so I’m focusing on language you can use to describe the way a person looks. I will use some phrases that will be familiar to you but I’ll try to use some more advanced vocabulary. There’s something weird about describing people. In fact, it’s something we do whenever we use more than one adjective. We use adjectives in a specific order. There is a rule for this order, but it’s not very easy to remember so it’s not a lot of help for you when you are learning English. I’m going to tell you the order now, but I don’t think you should worry about it. Instead, all you need to do is remember the bits that we use to describe people and the order will start to feel natural to you. No native speakers know this list – I’ve been teaching for over 20 years and I had to look it up. The order is: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. So when you’re describing people, you need to worry about your opinion, the person’s size, age, shape,  colour and origin. 

Opinion

Let’s start with your opinion. By this, we mean subjective qualities like stunning, beautiful, handsome, pretty, plain, ugly, hideous. Some adjectives are more commonly used to describe women, some are for men and some are for both. For women, if you want to be positive, you can say: she’s beautiful or she’s stunning. There are some old fashioned adjectives that you might read, like ravishing or divine, but you won’t hear them much these days. We use glowing and radiant to describe that special beauty that you see in pregnant women. For men, you can say handsome. Men can be ruggedly handsome which means they look a bit older, but still strong and vital. The adjectives gorgeous and good looking can be used for men and women. You can also use sexy to describe men and women, but that says a bit more about your feelings about the person you are describing than it does really describe their appearance.

In American English, men and women are described as cute, meaning good looking, but in British English, cute is for things like little children and baby animals. We also use the adjective pretty to describe youthful beauty in children and young-looking adolescents. Some adults are pretty, too, this means they have a youthful beauty.

If you don’t like the way someone looks you can say they are ugly or even worse, hideous. There are stronger adjectives too, like grotesque or repulsive, but these are used to describe monsters. 

Size

So first comes opinion. A beautiful woman. A handsome man. A pretty girl. Next comes size. When you’re describing people, this really means height. So you’ll know tall and short. You can also describe someone who is tall and thin as lanky. You can use tiny to describe women and men who are very short and petite to describe women who are short and slim. I don’t think we’d normally use it to describe a man, you can describe a small and slim man as slight.

Age

So that’s opinion and size. A handsome tall man, a beautiful petite woman. Next comes age. So you can say young – this really depends on how old you are. My parents call everyone under 35 young. Middle-aged; this is from around 40-55 and this adjective breaks the rules and acts as part of a compound noun to form middle-aged man, middle-aged woman a lot of the time mature from 55 to 65 and anyone over 65 is old. People don’t like being called old. People really don’t like being called elderly which means very old. In fact, people don’t like being called most ages apart from young so it’s probably best to avoid all of these expressions unless you are trying to describe someone to a friend or the police.

Shape

So we’ve done opinion, size, age. I’ll not use all of them at once. A tall middle-aged man. A beautiful young woman. Next is shape. This is a little bit complicated, because size and shape for people are too closely related. However, if you say someone’s fat or really fat obese, it definitely comes in this place. Similarly, skinny and thin fit in this order. Shapely, and curvy are both used to describe women with larger breasts and bottom and also fit in this order. Men can be well built, meaning they look muscular. Men can also be stocky which means they look strong and muscular, but a bit fat as well.Not like bodybuilder, more like a house builder. Stocky is only used for men of average height and less. It’s quite common to hear someone described as short and stocky.

Colour

That’s opinion, size, age and shape. A pretty young skinny girl … A ruggedly handsome tall well-built man. All we’ve got left is colour and origin. Skin colour is a complicated business because of racists. I’m going to do my best to describe the way I use language to talk about skin colour. You see, skin colour sometimes gets confused with origin and is not actually very useful as a description. White – we describe people with pale skin from Europe as white. We’re not actually white – more a kind of dirty pink, beige colour. But we say white. If a person is very pale, you can say pale-skinned. If a person is white but has spent too long in the sun, you can say they are tanned. When I was a kid, I would have described my tanned friends as brown, but these days, I think that brown is used to describe people from South Asia and East Asia.

This is getting confusing. My wife is from East Asia and I really don’t know how to describe the colour of her skin. She is quite brown, especially if she has been in the sun, but the word is so mixed up with race. We use the term black to describe people whose ancestors were African, though most Black people in the UK are descended from immigrants from the West Indies in the Caribbean I think. OK – I’m ready to give up on this. You can say black for people of African or West Indian descent and white for people of European descent. If someone is really pale or really dark, you can say pale-skinned or dark-skinned, but if you’re describing a black person, they need to be really dark-skinned or you just sound racist so if you’re not sure, it’s best to avoid the topic. 

Origin

OK – that’s opinion, size, age, shape, colour. A ruggedly handsome tall well built young black man. Lastly, origin. This is less controversial, thank goodness. So you can use nationality French, Japanese or Northern, Southern when you are in a country or even continents – Asian, Latin American, South Asian, Eastern European. Here are some examples:

A ruggedly handsome tall well built young black English man.

A pretty young French girl.

An ugly short fat Eastern European man.

A lanky German woman. 

A gorgeous tall slim pale-skinned Latin American man.

I do need to point out that there are exceptions to these rules. Generally, this is the order and it’s worth thinking about, but there are two cliched descriptions that break these rules. They are tall, dark and handsome and short, fat and ugly. I think we always use and in these cliches, but I want you to be aware of them so you don’t come across them and say Jack, you said the order was opinion, size, age, shape, colour origin. Normally, it is, but English is a tricky language.

Conclusion

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a comment or a review and don’t forget that you can read the transcript for this podcast and complete some language activities on LearnEnglishVocabulary.co.uk.

Thanks for listening.

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3 Comments

  • Roberta
    Posted 24/06/2022 at 1:27 am

    Hey Jack,
    Lemm tell ya that I just loved your podcasts, just came across them while looking for the damn adjective list 🙂
    Loved your posts and the way you present your topics. Keep up with the good work 🙂

  • Leyla
    Posted 12/03/2023 at 5:11 pm

    Hi jack. l love so much your podcasts. first l listen a podcast and then l write the podcast completely and l listen once again. I’ve been dealing with a podcast about an hour, this way is very useful for me. Thanks again and again

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