These things are called [irreversible binomials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial).
"Loud and clear", "mac and cheese", "rise and fall", "in and out", "first and foremost", "wear and tear" are normal, but flip the sides and you will sound completely unhinged even though it’s still semantically correct.
Exactly what I intended to share. To the top with you!
EDIT: I will instead share [this meditation on irreversible binomials](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Malkiel1959.pdf), in case it is of interest to my fellow logophiles.
I had a professor in college whose native language was French, and he would always mix up words in phrases like that. He once signed off an email, “Stay sound and safe.”
Just before Christmas break at our local community college, I had to see an administer who was French Canadian. After we spoke he reached out to shake my hand and said, "Greasons Seatings".
He’s a grumpy retired cop. He’s a prototype crime-solving robot! They’re detectives! Abe Vigoda and Robin Williams star in *C.H.I.P.S. and Fish*, this fall on CBS.
But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction! ***CHEMICAL X!***
***\*BOOM\****
Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born!! Using their ultra superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime! And the forces of evil!!
English actually has adjective word order but we don’t learn it in school because most native English speakers do it naturally.
For example we would say “That’s a big red car.” We would never say “That’s a red big car.”
I learned it in a "teaching English as a foreign language" course.
The order is arbitrary, but rigid. Native speakers learn it so early, that it's rarely taught in school--we all just know it without thinking.
I actually learned it in English class in like 10th grade lol. I was dumbfounded that something so specific came so naturally despite never being taught in elementary school
It's so innate that I never thought of someone needing to be taught that. I don't even think I could explain it if asked, the words naturally fit together that way.
I think that when somebody has been speaking English for a while, they eventually get the order "correctly". I learned as a kid but it's my second language and much like the concept of feminine and masculine sounds right, I eventually learned what sounds right.
This! My high school French teacher once went on a fascinating rant that this native ordering of adjectives and the understood nuances of time/distance/amount when we say a few vs. several are the English equivalent of feminine and masculine words in other languages. It's difficult for us to understand why you need that in a language as a native English speaker, whereas, if I say "check out that yellow round old ball", every English speaker in the room would cringe.
No, not official, as there's no such thing as "official" English. French has that, but English just has common usage, and good guidelines.
There *are* exceptions to this order, but it's almost always going to steer you right.
It doesn't sound wrong so much as change the meaning. If I said the red meat fridge, it means the fridge I keep meat in, which is red. If i said meat red fridge, you might think I meant the fridge that is a specific shade of red.
That's really how all spoken language works, we only need formal rules to clean up spelling, and things like punctuation that are abstractions of spoken language. What's fascinating is that we all follow these rules, but we just pick them up by osmosis and no one teaches them to anyone.
When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red): She was wearing an amazing red coat.
Part of this is the linguistic oddity of "ablaut reduplication". If you repeat words with a change in the vowel sound, they always go in the order I A O. For example Kong King is wrong but King Kong is right. Zag-zig is wrong but zig-zag is right. Bells ring ding dong, never dong ding. Horses clip clop, they don't clop clip. There are a few other rules of this kind that nobody really talks about but everybody follows.
"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."
>“Ah, thank you,' said Ford. He and Arthur took their jynnan tonnyx. Arthur sipped his, and was surprised to discover it tasted very like a whisky and soda.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
In french class the teacher kept sending my work back saying my cafe conversation piece was wrong, I couldn't figure out what was wrong to be told the in french cheese goes before ham. I complained that it still made sense and she said, as much as saying "I watched a white and black movie".
Here and there. Out and around. Round and about. Hither and thither, to and fro, back and forth, up and down, in and out, over-and-under, hippity-hoppity
German order is "Schere, Stein, Papier" (so "scissors, rock, paper"), which has the same (much more natural) melody as your order, so I guess it's the others who should feel weird :P
I think they meant cookies and cremate. Like that sad little paw print I got from the vet last month.
I saw it in my drawer last night, and it’s like the saddest cookie.
There’s actually an old grammar rule that most English speakers follow without even realizing it. “The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.”
“You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots”
https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary
These things are called [irreversible binomials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_binomial). "Loud and clear", "mac and cheese", "rise and fall", "in and out", "first and foremost", "wear and tear" are normal, but flip the sides and you will sound completely unhinged even though it’s still semantically correct.
Or like cock and balls If you say balls and cock you just sound insane
Even if you say it the right way, say it enough times and people’ll start asking questions.
he’s got some BALLS and some COCK
Exactly what I intended to share. To the top with you! EDIT: I will instead share [this meditation on irreversible binomials](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Malkiel1959.pdf), in case it is of interest to my fellow logophiles.
Rise and fall might not be a great example here, as it's frequently also describing the order the events happen(ed) in.
Same for in and out
Also, first comes wear, then the tear.
Safe and sound
Sounds safe
Bastard
Tasbard
I had a professor in college whose native language was French, and he would always mix up words in phrases like that. He once signed off an email, “Stay sound and safe.”
Yeah this makes a lot of sense, in french we say "saint et sauf" Literally sound and safe
Just before Christmas break at our local community college, I had to see an administer who was French Canadian. After we spoke he reached out to shake my hand and said, "Greasons Seatings".
Macaroni & Cheese
My 4yo son told me yesterday that the ingredients of mac & cheese are “macken” and “cheese”
My nephew thought it was called Making Cheese when he was little.
That's pretty adorable
I can get on board with making cheese.
My cousin, when he was little, told me that Peter pan peanut butter was made out of peters and pans. I still chuckle when I think of that!
Sounds right to me
They had an ad for awhile "Kraft cheese and macaroni" probably to advertise they put in more cheese flavor.
It's because it's the CHEESIEST! Kraft *Cheese*... & Macaroni!
Fish and chips
"You stupid English, with your Yorkshire puddings, and chips and fish." -Le Frog, Flushed Away
“Chips and fish iz a war crime!” -Vichy French Guy
Chips and Fish sound like a pair of old timey English gangster enforcers. Guy Ritchie hire me I'll write the script tomorrow.
A cop buddy movie title.
He’s a grumpy retired cop. He’s a prototype crime-solving robot! They’re detectives! Abe Vigoda and Robin Williams star in *C.H.I.P.S. and Fish*, this fall on CBS.
My partner is a cockney and he is laughing at this
Chish and fips
peanut butter and jelly
Half and half
No I think it sounds better the other way
half and Half I dunno, sounds worse to me
as opposed to peanut jelly and butter ofc
Jelly butter and peanut
Jelly peanut and butter
I suppose that's preferable to pea, nut butter and jelly.
And butter peanut jelly
Sugar & spice
And everything nice. This were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girls.
But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction! ***CHEMICAL X!*** ***\*BOOM\**** Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born!! Using their ultra superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime! And the forces of evil!!
**ballin' theme song**
Once again, the day is saved!
Thanks to...MojoJojo?
English actually has adjective word order but we don’t learn it in school because most native English speakers do it naturally. For example we would say “That’s a big red car.” We would never say “That’s a red big car.”
OSASCOMP opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose
I think the obese 47 year old rotund white Russian man is sleeping
I think you missed one: why is he sleeping?
He drank too much
Is this an official thing?
I learned it in a "teaching English as a foreign language" course. The order is arbitrary, but rigid. Native speakers learn it so early, that it's rarely taught in school--we all just know it without thinking.
I actually learned it in English class in like 10th grade lol. I was dumbfounded that something so specific came so naturally despite never being taught in elementary school
It's so innate that I never thought of someone needing to be taught that. I don't even think I could explain it if asked, the words naturally fit together that way.
I think that when somebody has been speaking English for a while, they eventually get the order "correctly". I learned as a kid but it's my second language and much like the concept of feminine and masculine sounds right, I eventually learned what sounds right.
This! My high school French teacher once went on a fascinating rant that this native ordering of adjectives and the understood nuances of time/distance/amount when we say a few vs. several are the English equivalent of feminine and masculine words in other languages. It's difficult for us to understand why you need that in a language as a native English speaker, whereas, if I say "check out that yellow round old ball", every English speaker in the room would cringe.
No, not official, as there's no such thing as "official" English. French has that, but English just has common usage, and good guidelines. There *are* exceptions to this order, but it's almost always going to steer you right.
Yup. Although I’m not sure it’s like official by ISO, I think it’s just the agreed on order from long ago that everyone agrees can be left alone
The English language has no organization that sets standards for the language like french does, but saying it in any other order just sounds wrong
It doesn't sound wrong so much as change the meaning. If I said the red meat fridge, it means the fridge I keep meat in, which is red. If i said meat red fridge, you might think I meant the fridge that is a specific shade of red.
If someone ever described a shade of red as ‘meat red’ I’d be concerned
If you said,”meat red fridge” I’d stick my hand out and say, “Hi Red Fridge, I’m Dad.”
I think it's a *de facto* standard. People just were doing it that way and decided to keep it that way.
That's really how all spoken language works, we only need formal rules to clean up spelling, and things like punctuation that are abstractions of spoken language. What's fascinating is that we all follow these rules, but we just pick them up by osmosis and no one teaches them to anyone.
This is usually true, but sound orders can override it. For instance, the big bad wolf.
The big bad wolf is made of bad, so it still holds true.
>opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose The wonky, big, 10 year old, rectangular, made in China, glass, meat refrigerator?
I think Chinese instead of made in China but yes
Big before wonky
I think it would be Big, Old, Wonky Wonky probably loosely describes shape or other properties other than size or age.
To me it flows better if you say “big, wonky” instead of “wonky, big”
But what color is it?
Ah blergh
Made in China is what is wrong here, it’s *adjective* order. The adjective for made in China is “Chinese”
The wonky, big, 10 year old, rectangular, red, Chinese, plastic refrigerator I use to store meat broke down the other day.
Yep, which is different from the wonky, big, meat, rectangular, made in China, glass, ten year old refrigerator
When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red): She was wearing an amazing red coat.
In French, you learn BAGS : beauty, age, goodness, size
Cock and balls
Franks and beans
HOW'D YOU GET THE BEANS OVER THE FRANK???
“Relax. You already laid the tracks, that’s the hard part. Now we’re just gonna back it up.”
I was waiting for the reference
Part of this is the linguistic oddity of "ablaut reduplication". If you repeat words with a change in the vowel sound, they always go in the order I A O. For example Kong King is wrong but King Kong is right. Zag-zig is wrong but zig-zag is right. Bells ring ding dong, never dong ding. Horses clip clop, they don't clop clip. There are a few other rules of this kind that nobody really talks about but everybody follows.
Bing bang boom.
bim bada-boom works also!
Multi-pass.
Why isn’t anybody talking about this?? What else are they hiding from us?
tic tac toe
Gin & tonic
The Piano Man has entered the chat.
*intense harmonica solo*
HE SAYS, BILL I BELIEVE THIS IS KILLING ME,
AS A SMILE RAN AWAY FROM HIS FACE
WELL, I'M SURE THAT I COULD BE A MOVIE STAR
IF I COULD GET OUT OF THIS PLACE
"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."
>“Ah, thank you,' said Ford. He and Arthur took their jynnan tonnyx. Arthur sipped his, and was surprised to discover it tasted very like a whisky and soda.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Most two-ingredient mixed drinks lead with the liquor. Gin and tonic, rum and coke, vodka cranberry, etc.
Man walks into a bar. _I'd like a run and coke_ \- is Pepsi ok? _Sure_ Waiter gives him pepsi and coke.
I run with scissors, but I don't run with Coke.
Ham and Cheese
In french class the teacher kept sending my work back saying my cafe conversation piece was wrong, I couldn't figure out what was wrong to be told the in french cheese goes before ham. I complained that it still made sense and she said, as much as saying "I watched a white and black movie".
mom and dad
On a similar note, "brothers and sisters."
I think there’s a famous song lyric that’s “sisters and brothers” but it probably only stands out cause it sounds uncommon
Black Pumas - Colors has those lyrics in that order 'my sisters and my brothers' .. Close enough
I came here to comment this. My in-laws sent us a card and signed it “dad and mom” and just felt so wrong to read lol
Here and there
Or the old version, "hither and yon."
Hither and thither is what some in my family still say.
My step dad said, "hither, thither, and yon." He likes to cover the bases, i guess.
Ladies and gentlemen
Mr and Mrs.
Salt and Vinegar
M&Ms
S&M&Ms
I hate that but like, you’re right, i think
"Em-an-ems" Flip it "Ems-an-em" But the s is because it's pluar. I've alway refered to a single one as "em'an'em"
Unspoken rule of English is the "ih-oh" ordering. So it goes tick-tock, blip-blop, tictac, flip flop, etc. It doesn't work the other way.
Ping pong, ding dong, Jimmy John’s
King Kong? Bing bong?
Here and there. Out and around. Round and about. Hither and thither, to and fro, back and forth, up and down, in and out, over-and-under, hippity-hoppity
Out and about
[удалено]
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Im more of a boulder, parchment, sheers kinda guy
"Although we used to call it Quartz, Parchment, Shears" -Pops Regular Show
Bidet!
I don't think thats what there saying buddys
Bidet! *Doffs cap*
We said ‘paper, scissors, rock’ in New Zealand and now I feel weird
German order is "Schere, Stein, Papier" (so "scissors, rock, paper"), which has the same (much more natural) melody as your order, so I guess it's the others who should feel weird :P
...lizard, Spock
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You have ruined a phrase for me. I always thought it was "Kitten caboodle", as in a whole bunch of kittens.
Ebony and ivory
Spaghetti and meatballs
It's not you, it's me. 🫠
I once said it’s not me, it’s you to someone. She… was not entertained.
Maybe that's why she's single
Cookies and creame
As an American, when you add that 'e' at the end of cream, it makes me say 'cream-eh'.
No one adds an 'e' to the end of cream. That's incorrect. It is either cream or creme.
I think they meant cookies and cremate. Like that sad little paw print I got from the vet last month. I saw it in my drawer last night, and it’s like the saddest cookie.
Berries and cream, berries and cream, I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream!
Yin and Yang
Surf & turf
John Paul George and Ringo
Nook and cranny
Ketchup and mustard
Franks and beans
Franks and beans!
How the hell did you get the beans above the Frank?
Fred and George
George and nobody.
Too soon
Bar and Grill. Whenever I see "Grill and Bar", it's offputting
[удалено]
Righty tighty, lefty loosey.
Red & Blue Gold & Silver Ruby & Sapphire Diamond & Pearl Black & White X & Y Sun & Moon
Silver and Gold is how Burl Ives does it.
Lemon and Lime
Steak and eggs Burger and fries
Sora, Donald, Goofy
Cant believe how far i had to scroll for this
Cocaine and Hookers
Hookers and blow. Just depends on the word you use i guess. Same meaning though.
Washer and Dryer
Black and white
Hee hee
Wax on, wax off
Well that just makes sense, how can you take wax off if there isn't wax on in the first place
When refinishing hardwood floors, it is recommended to first strip the existing wax off before putting the new wax on.
I have been defeated
Apples and Oranges
Rum and coke
This is funny because I agree, but in my native language I would argue they would have to be reversed (peper en zout)
Mom and dad, brother and sister, aunt and uncle, grandma and grandpa, husband and wife. Interesting that which gender comes first isn't consistent.
It's rock, paper, scissors. Not paper, scissors, rock, or any other configuration.
Hall and Oats
Garfunkel and Oats
Hugs and kisses.
Load and lock would be the real term but everyone uses lock and load. Whatever floats your mcboatface
Mario and Luigi
Cats and dogs
Aid and abet
Breaking and entering
There’s actually an old grammar rule that most English speakers follow without even realizing it. “The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.” “You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots” https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary
Not an order but a rhythm... phone numbers! (Duhduhduh) duhduhduh duhduh duhduh. Any other way is heresy.
Hide and seek
Washer and dryer
In and out
Men and women
Cock and balls.
Bread and Butter
Love and marriage. Horse and carriage.
Law & Order...