English: Describing People

Level: A2. Describing a person is a daily skill — pointing someone out in a photo, telling a friend who to look for, or saying what someone is like. You need two small verbs, be and have, and a bank of adjectives for looks and character.

By the end of this page you can…

…describe someone’s height, build, age, hair and eyes, give two or three personality adjectives, and put several adjectives in the right order before a noun.

Be or have?

English splits the job of describing between two verbs.

Use be for a general quality — height, build, age, and personality: She is tall. · He is friendly.

Use have (or the common British form have got) for a feature the person possesses — hair, eyes, a beard, glasses: She has brown eyes. · He’s got short hair. Have and have got mean the same here; have got is a little more conversational.

Words for appearance

Group the adjectives by what they describe.

Describes	Words you can use
Height	tall, short, of medium height
Build	slim, well-built, broad-shouldered
Age	young, middle-aged, old, elderly
Hair (length)	long, short, shoulder-length
Hair (type)	straight, wavy, curly, bald
Hair (colour)	black, dark, brown, fair, blonde, red, grey
Eyes	blue, green, brown, dark

You can also say someone wears glasses, has a beard, or has freckles.

Words for personality

Personality adjectives go with be: She is …

Warm: kind, friendly, generous, patient
Lively: funny, cheerful, confident, outgoing
Quiet: shy, calm, serious
Work: hard-working, clever, creative

Adjective order

When you use more than one adjective before a noun, English follows a usual order: opinion → size → age → shape → colour → noun.

a lovely little old lady → opinion, size, age
a tall young man with short brown hair
big blue eyes → size, colour

You rarely use more than two or three at once. Importantly, the adjective never changes for number or gender: a tall man, two tall women — always tall.

Example sentences

Play each line and say it along with the audio. The people described here are deliberately varied.

She is tall and slim.

'Be' for height and build.
He is quite short.

'Quite' softens the description.
My neighbour is middle-aged.

An age adjective with 'be'.
She has long curly hair.

'Have' for a feature; two adjectives before 'hair'.
He's got short grey hair.

'Have got' is the casual British form.
She has dark skin and brown eyes.

Describing colouring with 'have'.
He has fair skin and red hair.

Another natural combination.
My teacher wears glasses.

Use 'wears' for glasses.
He has a short beard.

A beard is something you 'have'.
She is bald and very friendly.

Appearance plus personality in one line.
The baby has big blue eyes.

Size before colour: big blue.
He is a tall young man.

Adjective order: size then age before the noun.
She is kind and patient with everyone.

Two personality adjectives with 'be'.
My cousin is shy but very funny.

Contrasting two character traits.
Our manager is hard-working and calm.

Describing someone at work.
What does your sister look like?

The key question about appearance.
What is your brother like?

This question asks about personality.
She looks like her mother.

'Look like' for family resemblance.
He is of medium height with wavy hair.

Neither tall nor short.
They are a cheerful, generous couple.

Describing two people together.

Recap card for the English describing people lesson: be for looks, have for features, adjective order

Quick recap before you practise.

How to say it

A few describing words hide tricky sounds — copy the sound, not the letters.

straight has a silent gh: say “strayt”.
height rhymes with kite: “hite”, with a silent gh.
beard is one syllable, “beerd” — do not split it into two.
beautiful starts with a “byoo” sound: “BYOO-ti-ful”.

Practice

Describing people practice

Try each one, then press Check. No sign-up, nothing is sent anywhere — it all runs in your browser.

1 Match each word to what it describes.

tall Match for tall
curly Match for curly
generous Match for generous
well-built Match for well-built

Show answer

tall → height
curly → hair type
generous → personality
well-built → body build

Sorting words by category makes them easier to recall when you describe someone.

2 Choose be or have: She ____ green eyes. (something she possesses)

Hint: you can point at eyes

Show answer

has — Use 'have' for features like eyes: she has green eyes.

3 Choose be or have: My uncle ____ very kind. (a general quality)

Hint: it describes the whole person

Show answer

is — Use 'be' for personality: my uncle is very kind.

4 Which adjective order is correct? a brown big old dog a big old brown dog an old brown big dog a brown old big dog

Show answer

a big old brown dog — The order is size, age, colour: a big old brown dog.

5 Which question asks about personality? What does he look like? What is he like? How tall is he? What colour are his eyes?

Show answer

What is he like? — 'What is he like?' asks about character; 'look like' asks about appearance.

6 Put the words in order to describe hair.

Show answer

She has long straight hair — Use 'have' plus length then type before 'hair': long straight hair.

Quiz

Previous lesson: English: Family Members
Next lesson: English: Colours & Shapes
New here? Start with Start Learning English Here

English: Describing People

By the end of this page you can…

Be or have?

Words for appearance

Words for personality

Adjective order

Example sentences

How to say it

Practice

Describing people practice

Quiz

Describing people quiz

Next

All English lessons topics

Lessons