Roots
Case of the Siamese twins
Deepti

Many times words in a language are used together and become conjoined so closely that they begin to function as one item in lexis. Due to this connection, such expressions are called ‘Siamese twins’, metaphorically named after the two conjoined twins first recorded in Siam. These were Chang and Eng Bunker, who were born joined together, henceforth giving the name ‘Siamese twins’ to all such children born in this condition.

The expression was picked up as the label for expressions like ‘hook, line and sinker’ and ‘time and again’. Siamese twins in the English language can be of many kinds. The most common kind is the pair of words joined together with ‘and’ and at times, ‘or’. Try and spot some used in these sentences: sooner or later, each person has to make a choice between all or nothing. At such moments when happiness plays a cat and mouse game, one is caught in a do or die situation and one has to choose between fight or flight, moving from strength to strength.

Okay, so you spotted six Siamese twins here, this is a good performance but a very old friend who is called ‘word order’ helped you. Word order is a typical feature of such expressions and cannot be changed if they are to make meaning.

For example, the trinomial Siamese twin phrase ‘tall, dark and handsome’ makes sense only when the words are in this order and not, for instance, ‘dark, handsome and tall’.

This is so because these expressions are almost clichés due to the element of collocation. ‘Collocation’ as a term in linguistics refers to the habitual placing together of words; the key word here is ‘habitual’, bringing us back to the idea of language being a habit structure.

There are many kinds of Siamese twins in English; ‘tall dark and handsome’ belongs to the group of ‘trinomials’, expressions that contain three set words.

Siamese twins can contain antonyms as in the case of ‘better or worse’ and ‘wax and wane’. The set elements may also be synonyms such as in ‘peace and quiet’ and ‘pick and choose’.

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