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sounds - The ordering of word pairs: anyone for chips and fish?


When we list pairs of words, certain orders seem much more common and natural than others.


A few examples:



  • Fish and chips instead of chips and fish

  • Ladies and gentlemen instead of gentlemen and ladies (likewise, men and women instead of women and men)

  • I'm sure we've all (?) had those disagreements about whether it's Rob and Salma or Salma and Rob (or whatever)


In most of these cases though, I struggle to rationalise why one order sounds more 'right' than another.


Is it purely a historical accident that one order is more common than another? Or are there subtle linguistic rules that are responsible?



Answer



They are often referred to as irreversible binomials and their fixed order is generally due to conventional usage:




  • A noun phrase consisting of two nouns joined by a conjunction, in which the conventional order is fixed. Examples include bread and butter and kith and kin. (ODO)



also:


Siamese twins (also irreversible binomials,binomials, binomial pairs, freezes):




  • in the context of the English language refer to a pair or group of words used together as an idiomatic expression or collocation, usually conjoined by the words and or or. The order of elements cannot be reversed. The expressions hammer and sickle (two nouns), short and sweet (two adjectives), and do or die (two verbs) are various examples of Siamese twins. When the two words are of equal weight and importance, the balanced binomial is also a bicolon. (Wikipedia)



For example:


Spick and span:





  • Some clue might come from the fact that the phrase is very old and was originally spick and span-new. This is cited in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, 1579:



    • "They were all in goodly gilt armours, and brave purple cassocks apon them, spicke, and spanne newe." (The Phrase Finder)





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