Wednesday 23 February 2022

postpositive

Having previously (see here, here and here) sustained a run-in with the proscriptive, unspoken rules of adjectival order from the Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth and the so called Royal Order of Adjectives, we quite enjoyed this panel discussion on the topic that demonstrated not only do the exceptions make the rule but also the convention is no fraught mandate or inconceivable mnemonic to commit to memory of the precedence of opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin material, purpose and then the subject noun but rather in terms of distance and proximity by what’s most to least adjectival and least to most noun-like as well as a fascinating insight into natural language and habit. Come up with some examples and how you would say them.