Irreversible binomial

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In linguistics and stylistics, an irreversible binomial, frozen binomial, binomial freeze, binomial expression, binomial pair, or nonreversible word pair is a pair of words, used together, in fixed order, as an idiomatic expression or collocation. The words typically have a semantic relationship, usually involving the word and or or. They also belong to the same part of speech: for example: nouns (e.g., milk and honey); adjectives (short and sweet); or verbs (do or die). Usually (as with the preceding examples) the order of such word elements will not be reversed. The term "irreversible binomial" was introduced by Yakov Malkiel in 1954, though various aspects of the phenomenon had been discussed, since at least 1903, under different names: a "terminological imbroglio". Ernest Gowers used the name Siamese twins (i.e., conjoined twins) in the 1965 edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage. The 2015 edition reverts to the scholarly name, "irreversible binomials", as "Siamese twins" had become "politically incorrect". Many irreversible binomials are catchy due to alliteration, rhyming, or ablaut reduplication, so becoming clichés or catchphrases. Idioms like rock and roll, the birds and the bees, and collocations like mix and match, and wear and tear have particular meanings apart from or beyond those of their constituent words. Ubiquitous collocations like loud and clear and life or death are fixed expressions, making them a standard part of the vocabulary of native English speakers. Some English words have become obsolete in general but are still found in an irreversible binomial. For example, spick is a fossil word that never appears outside the phrase spick and span. Some other words, like vim in vim and vigor or abet in aid and abet, have become rare and archaic outside the collocation. Numerous irreversible binomials are used in legalese. Due to the use of precedent in common...