1, #138 - You don't know you know this.
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Most things I share in this newsletter are something new I’ve recently learned, which I didn’t know before. But this 1? I’ve somehow known it my whole life—without ever realizing it:
“Adjectives 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’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
— Mark Forsyth
Isn’t that wild?
For all the grammatical rules we learn in school, this is one we all seem to follow without it ever being taught. A perfect example of shared, invisible knowledge.
I hope you laugh out loud today, thinking of phrases with the descriptions out of order, like I have.
Insight via Mark, in The Elements of Eloquence.