Mea Culpa: the mysterious rules of the order of adjectives

John Rentoul on questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

ITV’s new drama ‘The Singapore Grip’ (ITV/Foxtel)

In our review of ITV’s new autumn series The Singapore Grip, we said that Daniel York Loh, the writer and actor, had accused the show of “recycling racist old tropes about exotic temptresses”. Thanks to Gavin Turner for pointing out that the word order seems odd, and for asking why it should not be “old racist tropes”.  

Mark Forsyth, in his brilliant book The Elements of Eloquence, says that adjectives in English have to be in the order “opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose”. He illustrates it with the story of JRR Tolkien’s first story, written at the age of seven, about a “green great dragon”, which his mother said had to be “great green”. In which case our reviewer’s order is right, because “racist” is an opinion. 

But I agree with Gavin that his order sounds more natural. The best explanation I can manage is that we are talking about “racist tropes”, and their age is additional information; they are not “old tropes”, some of which are racist and others not.  

Deceptive punch: We confused two words that sound the same in an article about boxing, which said that the fight between Alan Minter and Vito Antuofermo in 1980 “was not a night for the feint-hearted”. That should have been “faint-hearted”. Thanks to Mick O’Hare, who spotted it and wondered if the writer had been thinking about a feint – “a deceptive or pretended blow, especially in boxing or fencing” – a word which comes from the same root as “feign”.  

The article only reinforced my view that the broadcasting of boxing should be banned. “Vito lost so much blood that everybody at ringside was splattered. It was called off at the end of the eighth round.” I nearly feinted.  

Stomp of authority: More violence in a report from Australia, which carried the headline: “Mental health patient put in induced coma after police hit him with car and stomp on his head.” Thanks again to Mick O’Hare. As he said, “stamp” is the usual form of the word. Stomp is a US dialect variant that is used in British English to refer to a kind of music or dance, or to mean “tread heavily and noisily, typically to show anger”, as in “stomping off to his room”.  

Going round twice: Mick O’Hare is responsible for most of the column this week. He also drew my attention to a World News in Brief item in the Daily Edition headlined: “Nasa spots first ever planet orbiting around its sun’s corpse.” As he said, “orbiting around” is tautological, because “orbiting” suffices.  

Americanism watch: Finally, he said he spotted the Americanism “advocate for” in our interview with Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-born congresswoman. In that instance, his appeal to the umpire is rejected, because she used it herself, and she is allowed to use Americanisms, being American. Although we use British English spelling in our reports of what Americans say, we don’t change their syntax.  

However, we did use “advocate for” six times in our own writing last week. For example, in an article about George Bridgetower, a black violinist who inspired Beethoven, we said that Frederick, his father, campaigned against slavery, “advocating for abolition”. This usage is increasingly common in British English, but I think “advocating abolition” is still less distracting to British readers.