If you encounter a big, bad wolf what would you scream? — ‘A big, bad wolf!’ But why not ‘A bad, big wolf’? This is because of a convention called ‘ablaut reduplication.’
‘Reduplication’ refers to the repeating of a word or pairing of a word with a similar sounding word.
Ablaut reduplication states that in a list of words, the interior vowel determines the order of those words. The high vowel ‘i’ must lead the low vowels ‘a’ and ‘o.’
If there are 3 words, then the order must be i-a-o. If there are 2 words, then ‘i’ leads and ‘a’ or ‘o’ follows. Some examples are given below.
Chitchat
Riffraff
Wishy-washy
Ding-dong
Tip-top
Ping-pong
Hence, even in mortal fear, you scream ‘A big, bad wolf’ and not ‘A bad, big wolf’ — the ‘i’ in ‘big’ leads the ‘a’ in ‘bad.’
But your terror is not ending anytime soon. Your ‘big, bad wolf’ contradicts another convention in the English language, i.e., the order of adjectives.
This convention stipulates the list of adjectives describing a noun must conform to an order.
There are two types of adjectives: opinion adjectives and fact adjectives. Opinion adjectives precede fact adjectives.
The order of adjective types is opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose <noun>
Arrange your adjectives in the above order to remove ambiguity and add clarity.
You may be even more horrified to notice this convention is not followed in your scream, ‘A big, bad wolf,’ where the fact adjective ‘big’ precede the opinion adjective ‘bad.’
Well, that is because when there is a conflict between ablaut reduplication and the order of adjectives, the former takes priority.
Finally, we can safely rest the horror of the ‘big, bad wolf!’
