Three or More Adjectives (OSASCOMP) Exercises

When three or more adjectives appear before a noun, the full OSASCOMP sequence becomes essential. With only two adjectives, native speakers often get the order right by instinct, but with three or four, even advanced learners need to think carefully. The sequence is: Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose. For example, "a lovely small old round blue French wooden cooking spoon" — though sentences this long are extremely rare in real English.

In practice, most three-adjective combinations involve opinion + two physical qualities: "a beautiful large old cathedral" (opinion, size, age) or two physical qualities + origin or material: "a small round wooden bowl" (size, shape, material). The key challenge is remembering that age comes before colour and colour comes before origin. A useful shortcut: think of adjectives moving from general impression to specific detail as you get closer to the noun. This topic appears regularly in B1 Preliminary and B2 First grammar sections, often testing three-adjective combinations.