As someone who didn't emphasize on learning grammar at all, I still sometimes find a case that calls for grammar rules.
I was asked which one is correct: fat silly cats or silly fat cats?
Intuitively, I found nothing wrong with both of them. So I searched the web.
The Adjective Order I found from British Council's website is: opinion, size, shape, age, colour, nationality, and material.
This implies that the correct answer should be silly fat cats.
However, based on my googling (is that even a word?), the use of silly fat cats is rare, compared to funny fat cats. But then again, funny fat cats doesn't sound right to me. I would personally prefer big fat funny cats. (I noticed that some people on the web wrote it as big, fat, funny cats, while others simply omitted commas).
So which are the correct usages? (if both are passable, which one is preferred)
- silly fat cats, or fat silly cats
- funny fat cats, or fat funny cats
- funny big fat cats, or big fat funny cats
- funny really big fat cats, or really big fat funny cats
Best Answer
Silly fat cats is more euphonious. Both are grammatically correct.
'Fat cats' idiomatically means rich people, or rich powerful people. So it could be that you are calling those rich people silly, as opposed to calling those silly cats plump.
The rhythm of these phrases is about the same, so either.
Big fat funny cats rolls off the tongue. It has much better cadence. So definitely big fat funny cats.
Again, the cadence is the deciding factor - really big fat funny cats.
really in this situation means "very", and modifies the adjective which immediately follows, so you are right to move the adjective "big" along with it...
Compare
This bag is black, as well as being very expensive.
This bag is expensive, as well as being very black.