Ironic username.
“the first certified, black architect” would have been unambiguous.
Edit for a cite (because I didn’t know the term for it, “coordinate adjectives,” until I looked it up just now): Coordinate Adjectives
To paraphrase Bertrand Russell: “There are as many religions as there are religious people.”
ISTM that the use of commas for coordinate adjectives has fallen out of favor generally. I was certainly taught to use them that way 100 years ago, but I rarely see them, even from very good writers, these days. Anyone else?
I was paraphrasing the Wikipedia entry, which had “certified African American architect,” and while I recognized that substituting “black” was slightly inelegant, and could be misread, I never dreamed my fellow Dopers would be so pedantic as to call me out for it. 
I admit that “black certified architect” would have been better.
Yes, it’s definitely out of favour now, though I still use them. English writing in general is much less comma-heavy than it was a century ago.
Pedantry is the horse I rode in on.
I disagree: syncretism is not about religion. It’s about a wider worldview. It is more about cultural traditions or even philosophy than religion. It stems from the Greek συγκρητισμος (syncretismós), composed of ‘syn-‘ (with), ‘kriti’ (from Kreta – yes, those who always lied) and ‘-ismo’ (doctrine).
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as
Attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, esp. in philosophy or religion; spec. the system or principles of a school founded in the 17th century by George Calixtus, who aimed at harmonizing the sects of Protestants and ultimately all Christian bodies: see Calixtin n. 2 (Almost always in derogatory sense.)
The parenthetical addendum is interesting.
It says the ultimate etymology is uncertain; the connection to Cretans is a 16th-17th century hypothesis:
< modern Latin syncrētizāre, < Greek συγκρητίζειν to combine, as two parties against a third (of uncertain etymology; explained in the 16th and 17th centuries as ‘to form alliances in the manner of the Cretans’).
English is weird in the way there is an unspoken and usually untaught grammatical understanding that adjectives have a proper order.
Emily Brewster: This ordering is so particular. You know, the idea is that native English speaker don’t have to think about this at all. This is one of those rules of English that is an absolute rule but that we all just absorb by virtue of being steeped in the language from infancy, that native English speakers just automatically understand that this is how our adjectives have to be ordered. …
Mark Forsyth’s order… is: opinion size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose, and then noun. The royal order of adjectives says that a determiner comes first, and determiners are articles, possessives, demonstratives like the, your, our, these, and then quantity, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin/material, and or a qualifier, like denim skirt, or hound dog.
Unfortunately what status qualified in “black qualified” has is beyond my meager powers.
Right. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that as a child he had written a story in which he described a “green great dragon” and was puzzled when his mother told him that he should have written “great green dragon”.
Sometime logic would dictate an order that differs from the grammatical order. Some Wikipedia articles deliberately use an improper adjective order to avoid misunderstanding. An article may say something like “Ryan Terry Clark is an American former professional football player”, which sounds off because “former” (age) should precede origin (“American”), but is done deliberately because the more natural “former American football player” could be misinterpreted as saying that he is a former American, not a former football player. It’s similar to the “certified black architect” phrase under discussion here, which is seems more natural than “black certified architect” because “certified” is (roughly) an opinion and should precede “black” which is a color or origin. Although it could be analyzed differently if you treat “certified architect” as a set phrase.
Pedal harpsichords were a thing. They look like a normal harpsichord – played with the hands on a keyboard – sitting on top of a larger harpsichord which is played with pedals by the feet. Organists would use them for practice, say, when they didn’t want to sit in a cold drafty church or didn’t want to pay a boy to run the bellows.
Here is Bach Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543, played on a pedal harpsichord:
The horse in on which you rode?
Real pedants know that such a construction is artificial and awkward. Vernacular speech is okay with me. What I object to is writing which makes you stop and think, ah, that is what they must have meant to say. It’s the break in the flow of understanding which is to be avoided. Applies to misspellings, poor grammar, awkward construction, etc.
This is pedantry up with which I will not put!
Watt? You threaten a pedant’s revolt?
I remember learning in History 101 about the mystery cults that influenced humanity and I think that was the last nail in the coffin for my belief in religion.
When I think of syncretism, the first thing I usually think of is Caodaism (which famously considers Victor Hugo and Sun Yat Sen to be “Venerable Saints” and Buddha, Christ, Lao Tzu and Confucius to be prophets).
Only one US state capital is one syllable (at least the way it’s pronounced in that context - slow, correct pronunciation would be two syllables). Pierre SD (pronounced “Peer”).
Two US state capitals have six syllables: Indianapolis IN and Oklahoma City OK
One US state capital is three words (this was a Final Jeopardy “answer” a while back): Salt Lake City UT
Or as Yoda would say “Threaten a pedant’s revolt you do?”
Is that a callout to the joke that begins:
“Who lead the pedants revolt of 1381?”
“Who led”
…and “pedants’ revolt.”