Idiomatic tautologous doublets

I decided to collect up some examples of "tautologous doublets", by which I mean pairs of words which are commonly used together (idiomatic) but which actually mean the same thing. For example, "time and tide".

Sometimes these forms come from legal usage, where they may have been coined from two different languages (eg the latin and french terms for the same thing) for clarity, or where two terms may have been in common usage in two different contexts and the legal wording was designed to clearly apply to both existing contexts. Sometimes these forms are just poetic or rhetorical uses, of which some may have been coined by authors but others have arisen in the vernacular.

Many of these doublets exhibit some form of euphony (eg, "bits and bobs", "might and main", "out and about"). Some are connected with "and", some with "or" (eg, "let or hindrance"), some are hyphenated (eg, "higgledy-piggledy), and some have no conjunction at all (eg, "free gratis"). Most of them can be used only in the given order (they are unidiomatic if reversed) and with the given conjunction (ditto), and more than a few contain fossil words in that one or both of the words is nowadays used only in this idiomatic phrase and not independently (at least, not with the same sense).

Note that I am only collecting examples where the words really do mean the SAME. There are many more idiomatic phrases where the two words have similar or complementary meanings (eg, "here and there", "flesh and blood", "give and take", "neck and neck", "to and fro"). These are not tautologous as such, and so don't count.

PLEASE let me know any other examples you can think of to add to this list. ALSO let me know if any of these examples should be deleted (eg, because the two words are not quite synonyms). Thanks!

Here is my list to date:

1. True tautological doublets
These words all exist (or existed), and have been combined into the idiomatic phrase.

"above and beyond"
"aid and abet"

"apt and able" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"bag and baggage"
"beck and call"
"best and brightest" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"betwixt and between" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"bits and bobs"
"cease and desist"
"chop and change"
"clean and tidy"
"confound and confuse" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"damn and blast"

"down and out"
"each and every"
"fair and square"
"far and away"
"fast and furious"
"first and foremost"
"fits and starts"

"free and clear" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"free and easy"
"free gratis"
"fun and games" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"goods and chattels"
"hale and hearty"
"hard and fast"
"have and hold"

"by hook or by crook"
"hue and cry"

"hum and haw" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"kit and caboodle" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"kith and kin"
"let or hindrance"
"liens and encumbrances"
"might and main"
"null and void"
"odds and ends"
"one and the same"
"out and about"
"over and above"
"part and parcel"
"pick and choose"
"prim and proper"
"rack and ruin"
"rant and rave"
"right and title"
"rough and tumble"
"safe and sound"

"six of one and half a dozen of the other"
"sole and exclusive"
"spick and span"
"stuff and nonsense"
"terms and conditions"
"time and again" (thanks, Adrienne!)
"time and tide"
"tried and tested"

"up and about"
"vim and vigour" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"wait and tarry" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"ways and means"
"wear and tear"
"well and good"
"will and testament"

2. Exact reduplications

These repeat a word or syllable for emphasis or effect, which is a bit of a special case.

"bye bye"

"choo-choo"

"chop chop" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"fru fru" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"go-go" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"lu-lu" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"night night"

"no-no"

"poo-poo"

"so so" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"wee-wee"

3. Rhyming or ablaut reduplications

These repeat a word or syllable in a modified form, either rhyming or with a contrasting/modified vowel. They differ from the true tautological doublets in that the second word was formed as a reduplication rather than selecting an existing synonym. In some cases, the second word has later become a synonym, perhaps precisely because of the coining of the reduplicated form.

"bric-à-brac"

"chit-chat"

"clap-trap"

"criss-cross"

"ding-dong"

"flim flam" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"flip-flop"

"higgledy-piggledy"

"jibber-jabber"

"kitty-cat"

"knick knack"

"loosey goosey"

"namby-pamby"

"pitter-patter"

"razzle-dazzle"

"ring-a-ling" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"splish-splash"

"super-duper"

"teenie-weenie"

"teeter-totter" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"tick tock" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"tip top" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"wibbly wobbly"

"wishy washy" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"zig zag"

4. Some questionable cases

These are examples where it is unclear whether they are synonym doublets at all, because the exact meaning or origin of the phrase is lost in the mists of time, or is disputed

"between a rock and a hard place" (thanks, Adrienne!)

"cock and bull" (thanks, Adrienne!)

How many more can you find for me?

Michael Finnegan

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan.
He grew whiskers on his chinnigan.

The wind came out and blew them in again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (begin again!)

What are the origins of this song? What is the story? Like many songs of this type, the origins are hazy and the story is mostly supposition. Let's see what we can do.

First World War

There is some evidence to suggest that there was an Irish soldier named "Michael Finnegan" who served with the British Army in World War I, who sported a beard, and about whom the following song was sung:

Poor old Michael Finnegan,

He grew whiskers on his chinnigan.

Shaved them off and they grew in again,

And that's the end of poor Michael Finnegan.

This song is quoted in "Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914–1918" by John Brophy and Eric Partridge, published by The Scholatis Press, London, 1930.

The four lines of this simple stanza all rhyme, although this involves distorting the normal pronunciation of the end of the third line and the addition of the fictitious "-nigan" to the end of the word "chin" at the end of the second line. It is from these features that the song derives its humour.

It seems that this song caught on, and was repeated and altered over time to become a "repetitive song" sung with and by children.

Repetitive song

A repetitive song has a structure in which a large portion of the words remain constant each time the main stanza is repeated with small parts changing each time. Common examples of repetitive songs include:

• There's a hole in my bucket
• What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
• Ten green bottles
• If you're happy and you know it

The form in which "Michael Finnegan" gained popularity as a repetitive song began with a stanza somewhat like the following:

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan.

He grew whiskers on his chinnigan.

The wind came out and blew them in again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (begin again!)

This verse appears in "The Oxford Song Book", volume 2, collected and arranged by Thomas Wood, published by Oxford University Press, London, 1927.

After singing this verse, the linking phrase "begin again!" would lead to the next verse which would be the same in the first and last line but a different incident would be inserted into the middle two lines. For example:

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan.

He went fishing with a pinnigin.

He caught a fish but he dropped it in again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (begin again!)

Note that the second line again features a fictitious "-nigin" on the word "pin". Additional humour is provided by the absurdity of the scene described: a pin would hardly be ideal fishing equipment! Here's another example which adds the "-nigin" on both lines:

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan.

Climbed a tree and barked his shinnigin.

Took off several yards of skinnigin.

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (begin again!)

Some of the extra verses can make play on the structure of the song itself:

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan.

He grew fat and then grew thin again.

Then he died and had to begin again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (begin again!)

These examples of extra verses are given in "Merry Ditties", edited by Norman Cazden, published by Bonanza Books, New York, 1958.

The general pattern with children's repetitive songs is that they proceed with each person in turn contributing a new verse, either a verse previously learned or devised which hasn't yet been sung this time around, or a verse extemporised to fit the repetitive pattern. A common way to bring the song "Michael Finnegan" to an end is to repeat the opening stanza but this time conclude it with:

Poor old Michael Finnegan. (STOP!)

Melody

The melody used for this song varies slightly, but most forms are similar to the following:

Further reading

Repetitive song on wikipedia.

Why does Easter wander so?

1. What is Easter?

Easter is the principal feast of the ecclesiastical year in the Christian Church. In most parts of the world it is known as “Pascha” (or some variant of that name), which itself derives from “Pesach”, the Hebrew name for the Passover.

The Passover is a Jewish holy day to which the Christian feast is intimately linked because the trial and crucifixion of Jesus reportedly took place during preparations for celebrating the Passover. Indeed the Christian celebrations of Easter take over elements of the Jewish feast, telling of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea, and of the Paschal lamb.

2. When is Passover?

The eating of the Paschal lamb to celebrate the Passover takes place on the evening of the 14th of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, as detailed in Exodus, chapter 12:

“ And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, … And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. … And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’s Passover. ”

The Jewish calendar is based on the cycles of the moon, with each month beginning with a new moon and lasting either twenty-nine or thirty days (a lunar month is a little over 29½ days long). Twelve lunar months come to about 354 days, so each year the Jewish calendar slips back about eleven days relative to the solar year. Approximately every fourth year, an intercalary month would be inserted to try and ensure that the new year always started at or after the vernal equinox, but this was not done according to a definite rule but at the arbitrary command of the Sanhedrin (supreme council of the Jews) based on astronomical observations. This makes it difficult to convert distant dates from the Jewish calendar into other calendar systems with certainty.

The confusion over dates is further increased because it was the practice of the Jews in Jerusalem to count their days from sundown to sundown, making some disagreement as to when the 14th of Nisan ended and the 15th began!

3. How does Easter relate to Passover?

Early Christians were divided as to the appropriate time to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus.

• The Eastern church based their celebrations on whichever date the Jews fixed the 14th of Nisan in each year, regardless of the day of the week it fell upon. The authority of St John and St Philip was claimed for this practice, which came to be known as quartodecimanism (on the basis that any significant schism in the church needs a word at least fifteen letters long to describe it).
• At Antioch, Easter was kept on the Sunday following the Jewish Passover (i.e. the 14th of Nisan).
• The practice at Rome and Alexandria, by contrast, was to celebrate the resurrection on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This was done on the basis that the resurrection reportedly took place on a Sunday (the day after the Jewish Sabbath) following the Passover (i.e. the 14th of Nisan) which was always a full moon (because the Jewish calendar is lunar) and generally followed the equinox. The authority of St Peter and St Paul was claimed for this system.
• In parts of Gaul (modern-day France), the celebration was fixed on 27th March (in the Julian Calendar).
• The Montanist church in Asia Minor kept the feast on the Sunday following 6th April.

The First Council of Nicaea was convened in AD 325 to regularise many matters of the Christian faith and to debate and decide on the nature of the Holy Trinity. It was at this council that St Nicholas is reputed to have lost his temper with Bishop Arias of Egypt and slapped him in the face, and one lasting product of the council is the form of the Nicene Creed which is still used in Christian churches today. The council also considered the observance of the principal feasts in the ecclesiastical calendar, and decreed that the Roman practice should be observed throughout the church. This was seen as properly retaining the significance of the moon and the sun in

the timing of the commemoration of the resurrection, while also clearly establishing that Christian observances were not dependant on the Jewish calendar.

So in the modern church, Easter is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, regardless of whether or not this coincides with Jewish Passover.

3. What dates can Easter fall on?

According to the rule, Easter can fall across quite a wide range of dates.

The Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox can occur as early as March 22nd (but the last occasion on which it did this was in 1818, and it will not happen again until 2285).

The latest that Easter can occur is April 25th (the last occasion on which it did this was in 1943, and it will next happen in 2038). Easter was on March 23rd in 2008, and will be on April 24th in 2011.

Calculating the date on which Easter will fall in any given year is quite a complicated process. There are some interesting tables of the dates on which it can fall, and the frequency with which it does so, on this web page.

4. Why is the calculation so complicated?

Even with the basic principle for determining Easter agreed upon, there are many complications remaining.

For example, due to the distribution of leap years, the exact moment of time of the vernal equinox advances by about 6 hours each year (or jumps back about 18 hours in a leap year).

Also, the time of day at which new moons and full moons actually occur also varies, so that lunar months based on observations of the moon can vary from 28 days to 31 days in apparent extent.

Finding the date of Easter requires three different cycles to be predicted and interlocked:

• the solar cycle (motion of the earth around the sun, giving rise to the solar year)
• the lunar cycle (motion of the moon around the earth, giving rise to the lunar month)
• the diurnal cycle (rotation of the earth on its axis, giving rise to the solar day).

On top of that, to find the Sunday following the full moon needs the seven-day weekly cycle to be factored in too!

It is not surprising that the English word “computation”, along with related words such as “computer”, derive from the word Computus coined in Mediaeval times to denote the calculation of the date of Easter! Computus is derived from Latin com- together with putare and means intensive reckoning.

In fact, the establishment of reliable mechanisms to determine the date for this church feast has involved some of the finest astronomers, scientists and mathematicians over two millennia.

Further reading

The following wikipedia article is thorough, but quite hard work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computus

This post is adapted from an article first published in the newsletter of the Friends of St Mary's Choir, Warwick, in March 2005.

How to eat a boiled egg

1. Cooking

To cook a boiled egg, lower it carefully into a pan of boiling water on the hob, taking care not to let the egg crack. It may help to hold the egg in the boiling water for a few seconds before releasing it into the pan. Some people claim that some vinegar in the water can help avoid cracking the egg, while others prefer to put the egg into water that is warm but not boiling.

Keep the water boiling gently for a few minutes, then remove the egg carefully. For a soft-boiled egg (one where the egg-white has become firm but the yolk is still runny) about 3–4 minutes should suffice and the egg should be served at once. For a hard-boiled egg (where both egg-white and yolk have become firm) a little longer will be needed, and the egg can be kept warm (e.g. by wrapping in a warm cloth or holding in a warmed pot) until required.

2. Serving

The egg should be served in an egg-cup, and eaten with a small spoon.

Which way up to place the egg is famously controversial: in his novel "Gulliver's Travels", Jonathan Swift used disagreements in Lilliput about the "right" way to eat an egg as a parody of religious disputes in England. We are told that formerly, in Lilliput, eggs were broken at the larger end, but that the Emperor of Lilliput decreed some while ago that all eggs should be broken at the smaller end. The conflicts between Big-Endians (people who preferred to break eggs at the larger end) and Little-Endians gave rise to "six rebellions ... wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown". I'm with the Emperor of Lilliput on this one: little end up works best for me, but I shan't accuse you of treason if you prefer it the other way!

Whichever way up the egg is placed, it should be cut across at approximately the level of the top of the yoke. By tapping gently but firmly on the shell at the appropriate place, a small break in the shell can be made, and then by gradually turning the egg around in its cup and repeatedly breaking the shell at the same height a line of fracture can be made right around the shell. At this point, the end of the egg can be lifted off. Some people prefer to use a knife to cut of the end of the egg. Ideally, the yolk will be just visible at this point.

A pinch of salt may be added to the yolk if desired. A boiled egg should be served with toast, preferably thin white toast lightly buttered. The toast optionally may be cut into strips approximately 1–2cm wide, known as "soldiers".

3. Eating.

The egg-white from the end of the egg may be scooped out readily with the spoon. The remainder of the egg is then eaten, starting with the yolk and concluding with the egg-white surrounding it.

The "soldiers" may be used to dip into the yolk, if the egg is soft-boiled. Well, what did you think they were for? Playing strip poohsticks with?

This picture shows a large size hen's egg, served little end up. The egg was plunged into boiling water for about 4 minutes, and the top was removed by striking the shell repeatedly with the spoon while turning the egg around, then finally scooping the top off with the spoon. The yolk was sprinkled with a pinch of salt, then the soldiers dipped in, and the eating was delicious.

Further reading

Towards the perfect soft boiled egg

An exceedingly regular coin

If I throw a fair coin (one that always lands on a face, never on its edge, and has equal probability of showing heads or tails) one hundred times, I know that it is not guaranteed to give exactly fifty heads and fifty tails, of course. However, exactly fifty heads and fifty tails (in any order) is certainly possible. What are the chances of it happening?

If the coin is thrown 2n times, then the number of distinct outcomes (each being a distinct sequence of 2n occurrences of heads or tails) is 2^2n (where ^ means power), because each occurrence has two possible states (heads or tails) and there are 2n such occurrences in total.

If an outcome (being a sequence of 2n occurrences of heads or tails) comprises h heads and t tails, with h+t=2n, then the number of such outcomes is (2n)!/(h!t!), because the number of ways of arranging 2n occurrences is 2n! but each such result comprises h occurrences of heads, which can be arranged in h! ways, and t occurrences of tails, which can be arranged in t! ways, so we have counted each distinct result h!t! times. If we are looking for cases where h=n and t=n, then the number of such outcomes is (2n)!/(n!n!), or (2n!)/(n!)^2.

So, the proportion of possible outcomes from 2n throws which comprise exactly n heads and n tails is (2n!)/((n!)^2)(2^2n), or (2n!)/(n!(2^n))^2 (because 2^2n is (2^n)^2).

This gives us the following results:

• For 2 throws, the probability of 1 heads and 1 tails is 0.5, or 1 in 2 (which is pretty obvious, because the outcomes are HH, HT, TH, TT, and 2 of those 4 outcomes comprise 1 head and 1 tail).
• For 4 throws, the probability of 2 heads and 2 tails is 0.375, or 1 in 2.666...
• For 6 throws, the probability of 3 heads and 3 tails is 0.3125, or 1 in 3.2
• For 8 throws, the probability of 4 heads and 4 tails is 0.2734375, or 1 in 3.657...
• For 10 throws, the probability of 5 heads and 5 tails is 0.24609375, or 1 in 4.063...

To answer our original question:

• For 100 throws, the probability of 50 heads and 50 tails is 0.079..., or 1 in 12.564...

Looking further ahead:

• For 1000 throws, the probability of 500 heads and 500 tails is 0.025..., or 1 in 39.643...

So there is a little more than a one in thirteen chance of getting exactly fifty heads and fifty tails in one hundred throws of the coin. Far from a dead cert, it is true, but more likely than I would have expected.

Further reading

The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?

It's always darkest before the dawn

I wish to take issue with this proverb.

I don't mean that I object to, or don't understand, the philosophy of it. The idea that if things seem dark now then it is worth remembering that dark times are also followed by bright dawns is a sound and uplifting one. And the additional implication that the darkest and most frightening time may be precisely the moment when dawn is about to arrive carries additional reassurance. The idea that things can only get better may bring much comfort. There is, we are reminded, a light at the end of the tunnel.

No, my issue with this proverb is that it simply is NOT darkest before the dawn. Or not *just* before the dawn, anyhow, which is what we are clearly intended to interpret this as meaning.

I was up before the dawn today. A very considerable time before dawn, when it was fully dark and the stars were brightly visible but the moon was on business elsewhere, the Eastern sky began to take on a luminous blue that gradually spread across the sky. While it still remained basically dark, this luminous blue very slowly brightened, so slowly that the change was not noticeable except in its long-term effects -- the stars, I realised, were gradually and one by one going out! Of course, they were actually fading, one by one, into the increasingly brighter sky. Then, as the last stars clung to visibility, the Eastern sky started to turn lighter, not so much a deep luminous blue but nearer and nearer to white -- still a hint of blue with touches of yellow and brown and orange mixed in. When this brighter light had spread across just over half of the expanse of the sky, the first rays of dawn appeared as a tiny corner of the sun ventured over the horizon.

It was certainly not darkest before the dawn: instead, the fugitive dark yielded to a striking colour display extending over several hours culminating in the arrival of aurora.

What does this mean philosophically? That if things seem really dark then we should count on only a very gradual improvement? That although the period of gradual improvement may bring its own fanciful and diverting aspects as it happens, dawn itself is still a long way off? That things can only get very slowly better? That there may be a light at the end of the tunnel, but we have to deal with a lot more tunnel first?

I think after all I preferred the original.