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
It feels wrong because it *doesn’t* mean the same thing. Even though we aren’t taught the adjective order, and there’s even some debate over exactly what that order is, there still remains an implied difference in how the adjectives are being applied to the word.
One commonly cited order of adjectives is “Determiner, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, and Purpose.” Since size usually comes before color, big seems out of place in your second phrasing, since it is not an origin, material, or purpose. There’s also more ambiguity in your second example, since “brick” could be describing the shade of brown, instead of the material of the wall.
In other discussion of adjective order I’ve seen people use a “great green dragon” and a “green great dragon” used as example of how adjective order matters. In a fantasy world the first would be a large sized member of the green dragon species/breed, while the latter would be a green colored member of the great dragon species.
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