Lo and Behold: Why We Don’t Say Behold and Lo

Some words go together like salt and pepper: they pair up or “triple up” in a set order. We are accustomed to hearing, for example, pros and cons, or grandma and grandpa, or life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and it can sound a bit awkward or “wrong” to change the order, as in cons and pros or grandpa and grandma or liberty, the pursuit of happiness and life. When we examine these duos and trios, we can learn about intrinsic preferences in English for the arrangement of both sound and meaning. Are you good and ready to dive in?

Putting Duos and Trios to Pen and Paper

These duos and trios, known as irreversible binomials, frozen binomials or fixed binomials (and trinomials) in linguistic literature, consist of parallel constructions—words of the same category joined by a conjunction like and or or.¹

 a hop, skip and a jump

 nouns

 make or break

 verbs

 fast and furious

 adjectives

The conjunction and can link related elements, as in pots and pans, or denote a sequence of events, such as wait and see or rise and shine. The conjunction or, for its part, links inclusive options (do you have any brothers or sisters?) or an exclusive choice (do or die, publish or perish).

Many duos and some trios consist of near synonyms for repetitive emphasis.

rant and rave
in any way, shape or form

Repetitive doublets and triplets frequently appear in legal language.

aid and abet
 decree and adjudge
 right, title and interest

Duos and trios often incorporate rhyme and alliteration. This brings irreversible binomials in close communion with reduplicative pairs like namby-pamby and chit-chat, which are discussed in the Language Matters article You Can Say That Again.

 sending love and light
 neck or nothing

 alliteration

hustle and bustle
 doom and gloom
 nearest and dearest

 rhyme

Some word duos and trios are idiomatic, such as ride or die meaning “a staunch supporter”, or a hop skip and a jump meaning “a short distance”. Others, like hamburger and fries or mother/daughter, cannot be looked up in a standard dictionary.² Rather, they are intuitively acquired, being one of the many “unknown knowns” that we retain about how language works. Writers rely on their intuitions, these “unknown knowns”, when choosing word order. Take, for instance, bishops and seamstresses versus seamstresses and bishops—does one sound more natural than the other?³ The next section will show and tell what’s behind these intuitions so they’re no longer so cloak-and-dagger.

Form and Substance

In the linguistic literature, a complex array of meaning- and form-based principles have been theorized to account for the set orders of these duos and trios. These principles are thought to result in pleasing and natural-sounding patterns that increase a duo’s or trio’s chance of becoming fixed and memorable. However, there are many exceptions to these observations, and so the facts and figures are far from plain and simple on this topic. Early studies focused on phonological factors (such as word-initial and word-final consonants), but later research suggests that semantic factors are more important, followed by metre. The next section covers the nuts and bolts of the most significant ordering principles.

Semantic Principles

Some of the most basic binomials are pairs of opposites, where the more positive element tends to come first.

good or bad
 all or none
fair or foul
triumph and disaster
life and death
ups and downs
yes or no
carrot and stick
the beautiful and the damned
penny-wise and pound-foolish

Exceptions to this rule include sink or swim, in sickness and in health, and rain or shine.

Some pairs follow a logical sequence in terms of time or causality (earlier to later, action to reaction) or distance (closer to farther):

before and after
now or never
cause and effect
duck and cover
be fruitful and multiply
lost and found
alive and well

here and there
 near and far
at home or abroad
this, that and the other

Several other semantic principles have been put forth. For example, “up/down” pairs usually begin with the “up” element and end with the “down” element:

up and down
peaks and troughs
upstairs and downstairs
head to toe
north and south

Additionally, the element perceived to have more power or a more active or important role usually appears before the more passive one:

a game of cat and mouse
speaker and hearer
attorney–client privilege
cup and saucer

This idea of the more “powerful” element coming first also extends to gendered pairings, where men are usually put in the first position.

men and women
men, women and children
boys and girls
husband and wife
his and her

 but compare the exception ladies and gentlemen

However, this order has become a bit more flexible since the mid-20th century—for example, women and men is more common than it once was, but it is still far less common than men and women. Notably, the order for many kinship-based terms has seen a gradual flip since the 1930s, with women now generally taking first place.⁴

  aunts and uncles
nieces and nephews
grandma and grandpa
mom and dad

but compare brothers and sisters

As we’ve seen, many semantic principles that influence the order of terms appear to reflect ingrained cognitive frameworks for how we understand the world and what we rank first (the here, the now, the salient) and are thus of interest to psychologists and linguists alike.

Now, it’s time to be all eyes and ears as we move on to some of the sound-based principles that impact word duos and trios.

Metrical Principles

Word Length

Duos and trios tend to have shorter words placed before longer ones whenever possible. This is sometimes known as the end-weight principle.

friends, Romans, countrymen

 the beginning of one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, from Julius Caesar

 the whole kit and caboodle
 Pride and Prejudice
 pomp and circumstance
 Simon and Garfunkel
 bishops and seamstresses

 the novel pairing we looked at earlier

The end-weight principle extends to other language units like subject-predicate lengths and coordinated adjectives in general:

My day was long, jam-packed and full of surprises.

Syllable Stress

Duos and trios are said to disfavour too many weak syllables in a row, following a constraint known as lapse avoidance. As such, complete and unabridged is preferred over unabridged and complete.⁵

complete and unabridged

 stress pattern: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM (three iambs, i.e. an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one)

unabridged and complete

stress pattern: da-da-DUM da-da-DUM (two anapests, i.e. two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one)

Another example, which avoids three unaccented syllables in a row:

“Why do you always say Joan and Margery, yet never Margery and Joan?” — “…It just sounds smoother.”⁶

Frequency

More common words tend to take first place, which is thought to align with how our brains process information in terms of cognitive paradigms and memory retrieval, and this often overlaps with the semantic principles outlined above. This may explain why mystery and intrigue is preferred over intrigue and mystery, with the more familiar word (mystery) setting up the broad idea and the more specific word (intrigue) adding nuance or detail.⁷

That’s It, That’s All

English has fascinating, often subconscious patterns that shape how we speak. Some of these patterns are revealed in set word duos and trios, whose complex ordering principles are still the subject of linguistic research today. These duos and trios have a familiar cadence, or ebb and flow, making them good for slogans (stop, drop and roll), titles (War and Peace), song and poetry (double, double toil and trouble) and other writing tasks. We hope you’ve enjoyed exploring the ins and outs of these fixed phrases!

This article was concocted by

Antidote’s linguists