Speaking up for secondary words: The potatoes and meat of language

My friends, I come before you on behalf of pepper and butter. And arrow. And all they represent.

They've been overlooked too long., left in the shadow of their more famous counterpart. Always listed second.

I come before you in support of the inanimate versions of Garfunkel, Eve, Clark, Clyde and Juliet (to Simon, Adam, Lewis, Bonnie and Romeo).

Why, for instance, do we always say salt and pepper in that order? What's wrong with pepper? Why can't it be first? Did anyone ever consider how pepper might feel always being relegated to the vice president status among spices? Maybe it doesn't matter, but salt being listed first is as certain as taxes and death.

See?

Why is it always bread and butter? You could have butter and bread and it would be the same thing, right?

Bow and arrow? Sure, you need a bow to shoot an arrow, but what's a bow without an arrow?

Gentlemen and ladies, let me make a case. When it comes to the order in which words appear, we sometimes treat it like we're comparing oranges and apples, but we're not. That "mom" always comes before "pop" while describing a small business isn't something that's done with mirrors and smoke. It's part of the potatoes and meat of our ordinary language.

See my point?

It begins in childhood. That's when Dr. Seuss teaches us that the troublemakers in "The Cat in the Hat" are Thing 1 and Thing 2. Always in that order. Girls and boys (see?) who read those books are taught that Thing 1 always comes first, even though it doesn't matter.

We're taught that chips always follows fish. We're taught that certain stores carry clothes for big and tall men. Why should "big" men get priority? I say those stores are for for tall and big men.

This is part of the pull and push of our language, the take and give – whether the words are spoken on written down in white and black. I'm not familiar enough with other languages to know whether it's universally true that inanimate pairs (or even people and animals: How about Jerry and Tom? How about Scratchy and Itchy?) are always said in the same order, but here in the United States, we should do more for the underdogs. In the home of roll and rock, under the stripes and stars, we should support the secondary words in two-thing parings.

Why aren't they breakfast and bed inns? Why isn't the song about ivory and ebony? Why don't people chill and Netflix? Why is it always yin before yang?

And why, for crying out loud, does peanut butter always get first billing ahead of jelly? You need both.

I suspect it's because we're lazy. Once something gets stuck in our mind (thunder and lightning; flotsam and jetsam), it sticks. Perhaps it's always been that way. Perhaps when the original people (gatherers and hunters, perhaps?) talked, they paired things up the same way every time.

Maybe that makes it easier to survive. Maybe that's a way our language adapted to make it simple.

I complain, but that's because I'm not stuck between a hard place and a rock.

Reach Brad Stanhope at brad.stanhope@outlook.com.