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

First of all, punctuation is really important. You’re going to get different answers with different punctuation, so please use your commas correctly. To answer your question/EKY5, adjectives make objects more easily understood. Ordering them from ‘more vague’ to ‘more specific’ directs understanding in a clear way our brains can relate to, from vague descriptors with a lot of other additional possibilities, to more specific and precise ones that make the object described more unique. To get to the specific descriptors, we need to get any necessary vague descriptors out of the way, and not double back to them after picking up a slightly more specific descriptor.
“The big, brown, brick wall” is less mentally exhausting than “The brick, brown, big wall” because in the second example, we’ve started with something very specific and ended with something very vague. We may as well have just stopped at “The brick wall,” which is more accurate because it is more specific. “Brown” and “big” have become filler words or unnecessary noise.

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