Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Today I heard a commercial on the radio for a restaurant that billed itself as “casually elegant.” It struck a wrong note.

I mean, either you are a casual restaurant or an elegant restaurant; but I do not believe you can be a casually elegant restaurant. The two adjectives cancel each other. Elegant by definition is not casual; it’s carefully orchestrated, carefully conducted. So I made the assumption that the restaurant is trying to appeal to a broad range of diners, trying to entice those who want to wear shorts with those who want to wear ties and jackets. It’s not a good idea.

On the other hand, can a restaurant offer elegantly casual dining? I think so. And herein is the issue. Two adjectives attached to a noun need to be in a certain order to be believable. Casually elegant doesn’t work; elegantly casual does. I haven’t done enough grammatical research to see if this hold in every instance, but from a sample of one I’ve deduced this rule: “The fancier adjective must precede the less fancy one.”

Let’s try it in other situations: Simple complexity is a phrase that could describe wine; in a way it has the same issue as casually elegant, with the less flattering adjective being first. Yet, when you switch it around complex simplicity doesn’t mean anything at all. So scratch my theory here.

What about everyday designer clothing? The simpler adjective is first, the fancier adjective second. It makes for a believable phrase. But if we turn it around to read designer everyday clothing, it’s still acceptable; since designers could create a line of everyday clothing.

Maybe casually elegant vs. elegantly casual is a linguistic aberration. I don’t know. I do know, however, that our language is beginning to languish as we accept words and phrases without questioning them.