{"id":733,"date":"2026-06-30T06:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T06:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/the-adjective-word-order-we-all-follow-without-realizing-it\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T06:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T06:16:15","slug":"the-adjective-word-order-we-all-follow-without-realizing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/the-adjective-word-order-we-all-follow-without-realizing-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Adjective Word Order We All Follow Without Realizing It"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>the rules of adjective order that fluent English speakers follow without quite knowing why.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you\u2019ll sound like a maniac. It\u2019s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.<\/p>\n<p>The Cambridge Dictionary lists a slightly different order: opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, colour, origin, material, type, purpose.<br \/>\n\u2014 Read on <a href=\"https:\/\/kottke.org\/16\/09\/the-adjective-word-order-we-all-follow-without-realizing-it\">kottke.org\/16\/09\/the-adjective-word-order-we-all-follow-without-realizing-it<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>the rules of adjective order that fluent English speakers follow without quite knowing why. \u2026adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you\u2019ll sound like a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[158,7,141,47],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-adjectives","tag-consciousness","tag-grammar","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}