Ordering adjectives

How do we order our adjectives when speaking English?

Remarkably, when we describe a noun, we almost always unconsciously arrange adjectives in this order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, and 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.

Related Ideas to Ordering Adjectives in English

Also see:

• Ablaut reduplication — zig, zag
• Anadiplosis
• Pleonasm
• Ghoti