[ExI] wordplay for a tuesday morning

[Anders Sandberg]

Dan <danust2012 at gmail.com> , 1/10/2014 1:48 AM:I think there's the rhythm of the language involved. "Black and white," for example, just sounds right as opposed to "white and black." Ditto for "black and blue" versus "blue and black," though there's violation of temporal, logical, or other order as in "head over heels" (doesn't violate but why is that strange?) or "have your cake and eat it" (which I read started as "eat your cake and have it").
Some of these rhythms are surprisingly complicated, yet people learn them implicitly:http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_good_word/2014/08/the_study_of_adjective_order_and_gsssacpm.html
I have been reading Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase, and it is very fun to learn where some of these idioms come from. I never knew that gamuts had anything to do with musical notation. 

Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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