diff --git a/Lib/unittest/case.py b/Lib/unittest/case.py
index 18dee026757..f334b5b71d1 100644
--- a/Lib/unittest/case.py
+++ b/Lib/unittest/case.py
@@ -872,7 +872,7 @@ class TestCase(object):
             - [0, 1, 1] and [1, 0, 1] compare equal.
             - [0, 0, 1] and [0, 1] compare unequal.
         """
-        first_seq, second_seq = list(actual_seq), list(expected_seq)
+        first_seq, second_seq = list(expected_seq), list(actual_seq)
         with warnings.catch_warnings():
             if sys.py3kwarning:
                 # Silence Py3k warning raised during the sorting
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index c2be420880e..4908f39c2bd 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -60,6 +60,9 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #14832: fixed the order of the argument references in the error
+  message produced by unittest's assertItemsEqual.
+
 - Issue #14829: Fix bisect issues under 64-bit Windows.
 
 - Issue #14777: tkinter may return undecoded UTF-8 bytes as a string when