Why does the order of adjectives matter?

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Even though saying “the big brown brick wall” means the same as saying “the brick brown big wall”, the second feels so very wrong.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

>”the big brown brick wall” means the same as saying “the brick brown big wall”

They don’t, though. The first one describes a wall made of brown brick as big. The second describes a big wall as made out of brown brick. The first emphasizes how big the wall is, the second emphasizes the particular shade of brown the bricks that the big wall is made from are.

Imagine there are two brick walls, with the leading adjective ignored. In the first case, one of those walls is bigger than the other, so you identify which you are referring to by specifying the big one. In the second case, the two walls are both big, and you’re identifying the one which is brown brick rather than some other color of brick.

All that is ‘how’ adjectives in standard English work the way they do. As for “why”, the answer is “just because”. Language isn’t really a logical code the way you’ve been taught to believe. Words do not define a thing, they simply identify and describe it.

Thanks for your time. [Hope](https://www.reddit.com/r/NewChurchOfHope/comments/xbrteh/por_101_words_have_meaning/) it helps.

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