The big bad wolf - or the order of adjectives

Sep 13, 2016

 Mark Forsyth writes in his book, The Elements of Eloquence, adjectives are placed before the noun, strictly in this order:

opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, Noun.

He says if you change this sequence, you will sound  like a maniac.

To illustrate this point, Forsyth offers the following example: “a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife”.

What do you think? Are you aware that subjective adjectives tend to appear further from the noun than concrete ones?

You would say boring French teacher rather than French boring teacher.

Explore it further here


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