are these adjectives coordinate?

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Anonymous

#472250 Sun, 03 Feb 08 10:45 PM

...beside me sat the skins of twelve virgin rainbow-colored unicorns.

Anonymous

Grammar Geek

#472262 Sun, 03 Feb 08 11:59 PM

Put the color before the virgin, and a comma between them. I had to wonder what a virgin rainbow was.

Grammar Geek

Joined on Tue, Jan 10 2006

Pennsylvania, USA

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Barbara, who answers in American English.

Commas

Anonymous

#472322 Mon, 04 Feb 08 04:38 AM

Yes, good suggestion. But when I use the test of using 'and' between the adjectives to determine if they are coordinate, the answer is a no, since doing so would suggest that there was a mixture of twelve virgin unicorns and rainbow-coloured unicorns.

Does anyone agree?

Anonymous

Grammar Geek

#472450 Mon, 04 Feb 08 01:47 PM

Anonymous wrote:

Yes, good suggestion. But when I use the test of using 'and' between the adjectives to determine if they are coordinate, the answer is a no, since doing so would suggest that there was a mixture of twelve virgin unicorns and rainbow-coloured unicorns.

Does anyone agree?

You need to explain the "and" test to me.

The unicorns were virgins and they were rainbow-colored. They were rainbow-colored, virgin unicorns.

Grammar Geek