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Tousled and Unruly


Two strong adjectives, tousled and unruly. I read them in a sentence yesterday and was immediately struck by the colorful imagery they provoked. Should they modify the same noun, though, as they did in the book I’m reading?


Three young cats playing

"Three Cats Playing" - WIX Stock Photo

Cute names for kittens, you say? Surely. And they may belong in the same sentence, too. Here’s an example: “My unruly child almost always has a tousled head.” The adjectives have similarity in meaning, and they lend subtle meaning to one another when used as complements: Because the child is unruly, his hair has a tendency to get tousled. This works because two different nouns that are related to one another are being modified in cause-and-effect fashion.

These two adjectives may be suitable as exchangeable synonyms, too, given the context into which they’re placed (for they’re not “the same”). Yet the question remains, should they modify the same noun at the same time? Example: “My child’s hair was tousled and unruly.”

The answer is that you can pair them to modify the noun, “hair” — but doing so creates an unnecessary redundancy. In this last illustration, the adjectives are too similar, despite their subtle connotations, to justify using more than one modifier. Two extra words were used that are unneeded: an adjective, and a conjunction.

So, which adjective to keep? They’re both strong descriptors. The choice is harder than excising a weaker word would be, but a final choice, like this, is invariably up to the writer and the context of the surrounding sentences.

If it was me, I’d choose “tousled.” The circumstance that the sentence was placed within was purely visual, and tousled does the job fine. Using “unruly,” though, brings another element to the sentence (and paragraph) that doesn’t really fit for me. On another day, the child’s mother may find in process of combing his snarled hair that it’s an unruly (and probably painful) job for them both, but that’s for another scene or background narrative.

Don’t try to stuff too much visual description, especially that which is unrelated to the narrative of the moment, in a long string of adjectives — unless those adjectives are both varying and pertinent.

Of course, sometimes we’re just flying along when we’re writing, and we let loose all sorts of garrulous constructions. It’s natural. Afterward, we have to go back and root out the truly unruly. We do this to keep our writing sharp.

That’s another tip: When you’re looking to pare your word count throughout a poem or manuscript, look closely when editing and revising for situations where you’ve used more than one or two adjectives. Ask yourself, “Are these adjectives too similar?” If so, remove one. If they’re not, ask, “Do I need all of these descriptors here/now?” If not, remove one or more; you can find other places to bring them back into the prose if they impart important description. If you need them right then and there, you’re good to go. But do ask yourself.

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