Adjective may be more rigid in some languages than others; in some, like Spanish, it may only be a default ("unmarked") word order, with other orders being permissible. Other languages, such as Tagalog, follow their adjectival orders as rigidly as English. The normal adjectival order of English may be overridden in certain circumstances, especially when one adjective is being fronted. In addition, the usual order of adjectives in English would result in the phrase "the bad big wolf" (opinion before size), but instead the usual phrase is "the big bad wolf", perhaps because the ablaut reduplication rule that high vowels precede
Postpositive adjective correct plural for a compound expression. For example, because "martial" is a postpositive adjective in the phrase "court-martial", the plural is "courts-martial", the ending being attached to the noun rather than the adjective. In certain languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Romanian, Arabic, Persian and Khmer, postpositive adjectives are the norm: it is normal for an attributive adjective to follow, rather than precede, the noun it modifies. The following example is from French and Spanish: In particular instances, however, such languages may also feature prepositive adjectives. In French, certain common adjectives normally precede the noun, including "grand" ("big") while