Talk:Irreversible binomial

Knife and fork

I’ve more often heard of ‘fork and knife,’ but anyways, who said these can’t be interchanged because they definitely can and have. Also it appears that a Siamese twin has to have no rhyme or reason (*rimshot*) why the two items can’t be switched, but you have on the list “slip and fall” and that’s just a sequence of events (you slip then fall, you don’t fall then slip) so it shouldn’t be counted as a Siamese twin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.38.178 (talk) 04:12, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

That's not true. There are clear patterns. All this was covered in the 1975 article on the semantic and phonological patterning by Cooper & Háj Ross. However, other editors apparently don't know of this paper. – ishwar  (speak) 23:41, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Ernie and Bert / Bert and Ernie

I know that "Bert and Ernie" is common today, but when I was growing up in the 1970s, it was always "Ernie and Bert". There were books and albums that included "Ernie and Bert" in the title, so I know I'm not imagining things or remembering wrong! See https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/%22Bert_and_Ernie%22_vs._%22Ernie_and_Bert%22 for some discussion of both sides of this issue.

Seansinc (talk) 02:31, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Non-English languages

I'd assume these show up to a certain degree in some other languages too.

--Special:Contributions/TheSands-12 06:28, 10 March 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheSands-12 (talk • contribs)

Doubtful examples

Many of the examples listed in the article are doubtful, either

• because they often are reversed (e.g. "port and startboard" may be somewhat more common than "starboard and port" but not exclusively - see also all the examples above), or
• because they are not commonly used expressions (e.g. "Bootleggers and Baptists" appears to be a phrase coined by one particular author and is by no means "a standard part of the vocabulary of native English speakers"), or
• because the reason for the order of the words is semantic, not a matter of collocation or idiom, as pointed out above in the case of "slip and fall" - other examples include "catch and release" and "dusk till dawn" ("dawn till dusk" is equally possible but has a different meaning, all day as opposed to all night)

Somebody seems to have made it their mission to make these lists as long as possible at the expense of being accurate or meaningful, which is a pity

--HairyDan (talk) 14:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I generally agree. But "port and starboard" is about 16x more common than the reverse in UK English, and 8x more common in US English.[1] Of course, other examples are more common, like pen and ink, which is >35x more common than the reverse. Do we want to have some objective threshold? Do we believe that Google nGrams is a reliable way to measure relative frequency?

As for the semantic and syntactic cases, we should just remove them... though there are some that are unclear:

• is "victory or death" a semantic sequence, i.e., "if we fail to win, we will die" or "if we cannot win, we will accept death"; or are they interchangeable: "the result could be either death or victory"?
• "above and beyond" -- does this mean "both above and beyond" or "above and then even further than that"?
• "alive and kicking" -- "both alive and kicking", or "not just alive, but even kicking"?

Thoughts? --Macrakis (talk) 17:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

On second thought, I see that Malkiel includes logical sequences, where the second element is the "consequence, inevitable or possible" of the first. I bet that different authors analyze the situation in different ways, and it would be good if our article discussed that rather than just consisting of long lists.

Following Malkiel's section VIII, then, we might want to categorize the different kinds of irreversible binomial along different axes. His discussion of "mutual relation of the two members" includes the following categories (this is just a summary):

• Formal relation
  • Same word: "wall to wall", "years and years"
  • B a variation of A: "bag and baggage"
• Semantic relation
  • Near-synonyms: "checks and balances", "death and destruction"
  • Complementarity, things that go together: "assault and battery", "hat and coat", "meat and potatoes"
  • Opposites: "assets and liabilities", "dead or alive", "true or false"
  • One a subdivision of the other: "genus and species", "dollars and cents", "months and years"
  • Consequence: "divide and rule", "shoot and kill", "spit and polish", "rise and fall", "if and when"

Since we're supposed to follow our reliable sources, I guess I was wrong above to say that we should exclude logical sequences; but perhaps we should annotate or classify them somehow. --Macrakis (talk) 17:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Replying to HairyDan:

Your assumption is that one order has 100% (1.0) probability of occurrence and the other order has 0% probability. But, that need not be so. If there is a strong tendency/preference for one order over the other order, then that is something must be included in a description of the English language. For instance, it could that when asking an individual person, they don't have strong preferences for one order for some binomials but strong preferences for others. But, when you ask thousands of speakers, you find clear preferences over the speaker population on average. – ishwar  (speak) 23:52, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

To user:HairyDan I think you're right, but being right doesn't greatly diminish the article's accuracy or meaningfulness. I agree; yet I am one of the main ones who developed the article to make it the admittedly bloated listing of odd expressions that it is. I think the reader is going to marvel at the pervasiveness of the irreversible binomial to the extent that he gives us some leeway in defining the term.

I came here to specifically call out fast and loose. I am, almost certainly, the one who added that to the article. And if I'm not, I permitted it and continued to include it through dozens of edits. I now have my qualms about it. I am revisiting the article to say that I indeed could and probably would say loose and fast given the opportunity.

But after reflection, I am deciding to keep it in the list. Why? Because the fast and loose version is well-known and well-used, and its reversal would not be frequently uttered by those who habitually read and listen to standard English. I think the reversals are, large and by (sorry, did I mean by and large?), mistakes.

And so my take on the matter of impreciseness — and occasional irreversibility — is that we as English speakers all know that there are exceptions to the rules. Siamese twins are no exception. We read the lead of the article and observe no equivocation about irreversibility. But, alas, it doesn't take too long to find reversible words (like eggs and bacon)! I think we give these imprecise examples a pass because we are learning something about English usage, and we recognize that English usage is flexible and has many variations. It's not the same as using a fraction in front of a whole number (1⁄32) or seeing °45 — it's just English. I like to saw logs! (talk)

Triple example

Rats, Lice and History

2001:171B:2274:7C21:88B3:909D:89DC:6D5 (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)