I found a fascinating article online about the order of words based on the sounds. The lead-in question was “Why do we say ‘tick-tock’ and not ‘tock-tick’?”
It turns out the reason is that words like that must follow a certain order to “sound right”. If there are three of them, the vowel order must be I, A, then O. If there are two, the first is always an I, followed by an A or O. For example:
tick-tock
mish-mash
chit-chat
dilly-dally
tip-top
hip-hop
flip-flop
tic-tac
ding-dong
ping-pong
Of course saying “dong-ding” for a doorbell sounds weird, and that’s why. It’s one of those unwritten rules that everyone knows but no one really thinks about.
The article went on to explain the even more fascinating adjective order, which is:
opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose
If a noun has multiple adjectives describing it, and they’re out of order, it’s immediately obvious (and strangely disturbing). For example:
lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
sounds right, and in fact much better than:
green lovely rectangular whittling little French silver old knife
Things get even more interesting when you combine the two. Does Little Red Robin Hood face the “Big Bad Wolf” or the “Bad Big Wolf”? Well, the adjective rule clearly places opinion (bad) before size (big), but the vowel sound rule says I comes before A, and therefore “big bad” sounds right and “bad big” sounds awkward.
Incidentally, this rule of vowel sounds is called ablaut reduplication.