Why ‘Bad Big Wolf’ Sounds Wrong
If you’re one of the three little pigs or Red Riding Hood, you might characterize a wolf as “big” and “bad.” But the order in which you say or write those adjectives makes a difference in how natural your speech comes across. People are more likely to say “big bad
wolf” than “bad big wolf,” despite the individual words being identical and the order of adjectives being disrupted. It’s the same reason we say “tic tac toe” and “tick tock” (as opposed to “tac tic toe” and “tock tick”). This linguistic concept is ablaut reduplication, a phenomenon that English speakers...
