Siamese Twins (linguistics)
Siamese twins (also irreversible binomials, binomials, binomial pairs, freezes) in the context of the English language refers to a pair or grouping of words that is 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 sink or swim (two verbs) are various examples of Siamese twins.
Some English words (e.g. vim in vim and vigor or the abet in aid and abet) are found more often in such phrases than on their own. In other cases Siamese twins are catchy (and thus clichés and catchphrases) due to alliteration, rhyming, or their ubiquity in society and culture. Word combinations like rock and roll, the birds and the bees, mix and match, and wear and tear have become so widely used that their meanings surpass the meaning of the constituent words and are thus inseparable and permanent parts of the English lexicon; the former two are idioms, whilst the latter two are collocations.
Read more about Siamese Twins (linguistics): Origin, Conjunction, Structure, Variants, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words siamese and/or twins:
“Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese and your ancestors lived in trees. Mine lived in palaces. It has been suggested to me that I am a bit of a snob. How true! I prefer to be.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“If twins are believed to be less intelligent as a class than single-born children, it is not surprising that many times they are also seen as ripe for social and academic problems in school. No one knows the extent to which these kind of attitudes affect the behavior of multiples in school, and virtually nothing is known from a research point of view about social behavior of twins over the age of six or seven, because this hasn’t been studied either.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)