the big green door

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

Y'all,

I checked Fowler and was surprised to find no entry under 'word order'
or 'position of adjectives'. He does have an article on Position of
Adverbs, but the article covers common grammatical errors, not mere
variations which do not appear to affect sense.

Fowler does give interesting examples of getting the sense wrong if one
omits the commas between adjectives, in certain cases. Modern usage
seems to have dispensed with commas separating adjectives.

For general consumption, I offer the following examples; in most, the
word order given 'sounds right' to me. I confess that I do not detect a
pattern which might lead to a grammtical rule governing such cases.

size first:
the big green door
the big wooden door
the big squeaky door
the big rusty door
the little gray door
the little wooden door
the small crooked door
the tiny squeaky door

wooden (material) last:
the green wooden door
the squeaky wooden door
the rusty wooden door
the mysterious wooden door
the green metallic door
('the metallic green door', of course, means that the color, not the
door, is metallic)
the squeaky metallic door
the rusty metallic door
the impenetrable metallic door
the mysterious metallic door

color last:
the rusty green door
the squeaky green door
the metallic green door
the impenetrable green door
the crooked green door
the mysterious green door

other cases, other combinations, cast iron idioms:
the quick brown fox (never any other order)
the lazy sleeping dog (never any other order)
the big bad wolf (ditto)
the great wide plains (ditto)
the clear blue sky (ditto)
the wide open sea (ditto)
but: the snotgreen sea (Joyce)
the rough rude sea (Shakespeare)
the terrible mysterious door (but not: the mysterious terrible door, I
think because the terror is in the mystery not in the door)
the terrible green door (it is a terrible green, but the door is all
right)
the green terrible door (sounds odd, but could mean that it is a
terrible door, although the green is all right)

no clear preference:
the squeaky rusty door
the rusty squeaky door
the mysterious big door
the big mysterious door
the impenetrable mysterious door
the mysterious impenetrable door
the crooked mysterious door
the mysterious crooked door
a gray, restless sea
a restless gray sea

German, too, has a number of common, fixed word orders--cast iron
idioms--, many of which are a matter of rhythm, not sense. However, the
German language has additional mechanisms for affecting nuances, and one
of them is forward position of a word (noun, verb, or adjective) within
a sentence to give emphasis. 'Der Teller liegt auf dem Tisch' is the
normal word order for 'the plate in on the table.' If you want to
emphasize that it is the table, and not anything else, upon which the
plate lies, you would say 'Auf dem Tisch liegt der Teller.' However, I
do not detect a similar mechanism at work in 'the big green door'. Size
does not matter, my wife assures me.

Perplexed by the complexity of languages,
Flash