Why does the order of adjectives matter?

Question

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

In: 98

Answer 1

Adjectives are descriptive words that can combine in numerous and ambiguous ways. “brick brown” could be interpreted as a color description and not actually implying brick as a material at all. A lot of the ordering we have internalized is probably about disambiguation.