Coming up on Word Matters, a supposedly inviolable law of the English language.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea,
Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
It's been reported that native English speakers naturally order their adjectives in a very particular way,
and that deviation from this order makes for strange-sounding English.
Is it true?
I'll take a look.
In his book, The Elements of Elegance, How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase,
Mark Forsyth writes that adjectives in English have to be in a particular order.
He writes, actually, they absolutely have to be in this order.
Opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose, and then the noun.
He says, so you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife,
but if you mess with that order in the slightest, you'll sound like a maniac.
This ordering is so particular.
The ideas that native English speakers don't have to think about this at all.
This is one of those rules of English.
that is an absolute rule,
but that we all just absorb by virtue of being steeped in the language from infancy,
that native English speakers just automatically understand that this is how our adjectives have to be ordered.