Describing Objects and Materials
Learn 20 A2 English words for describing objects and materials - leather, smooth, rough, narrow, valuable - plus adjective order, a story and a quiz.
If you can only say big, small and nice, you cannot describe a thing you have lost, a thing you want to buy, or a thing you are selling. This lesson gives you eight materials and eleven adjectives in opposite pairs, and then answers the question every learner eventually asks: when you use three adjectives together, what order do they go in? Then come with me into my grandfather’s workshop, the weekend after he died.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/məˈtɪəriəl/
What something is made of: wood, metal, cotton.
What material is this made of?
/wʊd/
The hard material that trees are made of. The adjective is wooden.
The handle is made of wood.
/ˈmetl/
Hard, usually shiny material like iron, gold or steel.
A metal box with a good lock.
/ˈplæstɪk/
Light artificial material used for almost everything now.
Cheap plastic chairs that break in one summer.
/ɡlɑːs/
The hard clear material in windows and bottles.
Screws in glass jars, sorted by size.
/ˈleðə(r)/
The material made from animal skin. Say LETH-er.
A leather bag lasts twenty years.
/ˈkɒtn/
Soft material from a plant, used for most clothes.
A cotton shirt is better in this heat.
/ˈpeɪpə(r)/
What books and letters are made of. Uncountable.
Sheets of paper for sanding wood.
/ˈhevi/
Difficult to lift. The a is silent: HEV-i.
The bench was too heavy for four people.
/laɪt/
Easy to lift. The opposite of heavy.
A small light hammer.
/sɒft/
Not hard. It changes shape when you press it.
The box is lined with something dark and soft.
/hɑːd/
Solid and firm. It does not change shape.
The outside is hard and cool, like stone.
/ʃɑːp/
With an edge that cuts easily.
Those chisels are still frighteningly sharp.
/smuːð/
Flat and even to touch, with nothing rough on it.
The handle was worn smooth by forty years.
/rʌf/
Not smooth. Say RUF – the gh is an /f/ sound.
This side of the paper is rough.
/ˈnærəʊ/
A small distance from one side to the other.
A narrow street where two cars cannot pass.
/waɪd/
A large distance from one side to the other.
The box is narrow at the top and wide at the base.
/θɪk/
A large distance between the two flat sides.
A thick oak bench.
/flæt/
Level, with no high or low parts.
A very flat tin full of pencils.
/ˈvæljuəbl/
Worth a lot of money.
It is beautiful, but it is not valuable.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
What Was in the Workshop
When my grandfather died we spent a weekend clearing his workshop, and I learned more about him from the objects on those shelves than from thirty years of conversation with the man himself.
The room smelled of wood and oil. Everything in it was made of a material you could name and touch – almost nothing plastic, almost nothing that had arrived inside a box with instructions.
His tools hung on the wall in order of size. Every one of them had a metal head and a wooden handle worn completely smooth by forty years of the same hand closing around it in the same place. The chisels were still sharp enough to frighten me. The bench itself was thick oak and so heavy that four adults could not move it, so we left it exactly where it was.
The drawers held everything and nothing. A roll of leather he had clearly been saving for something. A folded square of cotton with three needles pushed into it, which my mother says belonged to his own mother. Screws in glass jars, sorted by length, with the lids screwed to a shelf above so the jars hung upside down. A very flat tin of pencils, all sharpened. Sheets of paper for sanding, arranged in order from rough to almost nothing at all.
The best thing was at the back, under a cloth. It is a small box he made for my grandmother in 1971. It is about the size of a book, narrow at the top and wide at the base, and when you lift the lid it makes no sound whatsoever. Inside it is lined with something dark and soft. The outside is hard and cool to touch, almost like stone.
It is not valuable. A dealer would give you very little for it, and I have never asked. But it is the only object in that entire room that has no use at all, and I have thought about that a great deal since: a man who made useful things for forty years, quietly making one thing that was only beautiful.
My brother took the tools. My sister took the bench, eventually, with five people and a borrowed van. I took the box, the roll of leather, and one small light hammer with a handle that is entirely the wrong size for my hand.
Adjective order. When you use more than one adjective, English puts them in a fixed order and native speakers never think about it. The short version that covers almost everything at A2:
opinion → size → age → colour → material → noun
a beautiful small old brown leather bag
Notice that the material always comes last, right before the noun. So it is a wooden box, and if you add more it becomes a lovely little wooden box – never a wooden little lovely box. If you are unsure, use two adjectives, not five.
Made of, made from or made in?
made of – you can still see the material: a table made of wood
made from – the material was changed completely: paper is made from wood
made in – the country: made in Turkey
Materials as adjectives. Most material nouns are used unchanged before another noun – a metal door, a glass table, a cotton shirt, a leather jacket, a paper bag. Only a few take an ending: wood → wooden, wool → woollen, gold → golden.
Learn them in pairs. heavy / light · soft / hard · smooth / rough · wide / narrow · thick / thin · sharp / blunt
Pronunciation: rough is RUF – the gh is /f/, as in laugh, cough and enough. And leather has the short e of bed: LETH-er, not LEETH-er.
Materials: wood, metal, plastic, glass, leather, cotton, paper.
Weight and feel: heavy, light, soft, hard, smooth, rough, sharp.
Size and shape: narrow, wide, thick, flat.
Worth: valuable.
Pick up the nearest object to you and describe it in one sentence with three adjectives in the right order, ending with the material: a lovely small wooden…
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
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