Ordering adjectives
![Ordering adjectives illustration: two people in kilts improbably play catch with a terrific giant old circular grey scottish stone throwing toy](https://images.prismic.io/sketchplanations/b3f46dd1-7095-4129-ad61-ce343d77c71a_188450432401.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=max&w=3840&q=50)
Remarkably, when we describe a noun we almost always, unconsciously, arrange adjectives in this order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.
If you try mixing them up in a different order it just doesn’t sound right. Compare, for example, a super little Italian coffee, to an Italian little super coffee. Or as Mark Forsyth points out in The Elements of Eloquence: How to turn the perfect English phrase, you can have a great green dragon, but not a green great one.
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