word order - Noun-adjective reversal - was it ever in use in plain speech?


In some more or less archaic texts I found the order of noun and its adjective reversed at times, like:



I traveled through nights starless, and roads unmapped.



I wonder, is it a stylistic tool used only in poetic/artistic texts, or was it used in day-to-day speech or formal, but not poetic writing in the past?



Answer



I believe that adjectives have never been postposed in English, the only exceptions being those noted in the comments: titles and legal terms adapted from the French (court martial, major general, heir apparent) and adjectives and participles with their own postposed complements and adjuncts.


The mannerism is tolerable in some poetic registers, but otherwise has an artsiness that will make most readers cringe. Graves and Hodge, The Reader Over Your Shoulder, under ‘Principle P’† of ‘The Graces of Prose’, quote a passage from an article by Ivor Brown:



   News comes of the death of a clown absolute . . . one of a dynasty adored . . . The clown absolute is quite a different person from the actor-droll.



G&H comment, ‘(Yes, quite a person different.)’



† ‘Even when the natural order of words is modified for the sake of emphasis, a sentence must not read unnaturally’


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