PARODY SONG-LYRICS
ORIGINAL SONG: "The Elements", Tom Lehrer, 1959.
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| Occasional binomials show alliteration (e.g. one and only) |
PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, 2015. This song is the third of nine in the series on Word Pairs. You can find the links to the lyrics of the previous songs at the bottom of the post.
phrases include some of the most colorful expressions in English. There are probably a thousand binomial expressions in the English language. To enhance the singability, I have skewed my selection of binomial pairs here, to emphasize those that have alliteration of the 2 elements.
For discussion of binomials, see the recent post HERE; there is a also an earlier post that honors our previous exploration of these intriguing expressions, and is entitled "The Allure of Word-Pairs: Alliterative Binomials (compendium)".
UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE". Click HERE to proceed to this site.
Dungeons and dragons, dark and dank, and dear departed, do or die,
And cliques and clans, and kith and kin, and bag and baggage, flee and
fly,
Head over heels, and belle and beau, Beauty and Beast, and two for tea,
And mind and matter, mine and mill, and flew through flue, the fly and flea.
There’s vim and vigor, pain or pleasure, fast and furious, slow but sure
And watching waiting, safe or sorry, walking wounded, kill or cure
And grins and giggles, hems and haws, and his and hers, guys gals or dolls
And quake and quiver, black and blue, right wrong, St. Peters and St. Paul's.
There’s stress and strain, and short and stout, and scratch and save, and shirts and shorts
Shoes socks, and art and artifice, and toil and trouble, tarts and tortes
And read and write, bold beautiful, and beg or borrow, this-and-thats
Moon o'er Miami, baked and battered, where or when, and heads and hats.There's prince and pauper, prim and proper, pots and pans, and put-upon
And drunken and disorderly, warp woof, wrack ruin, and AlAnon.
The order of paired elements - important? yes, no, may-aybe;
Yet, slip and slide, not hair nor hide, the definition gets defied,
Like 'Prejudice' before the 'Pride', so 'side by side' is classified
With home sweet home, rose is a rose, eye for an eye, and nose to nose -
These phrases pose the gap to close that spaces poetry from prose.
There's Jack and Jill, from dusk 'til dawn, bumper to bumper, inch by inch,
And first and foremost, hand in hand, with spice and sugar, just a pinch.
"What's right is right, what's fair is fair", said more and more by Mo-other,
From sea to shining sea, if it's not one thing, it's ano-other.
And, for those interested, here's how you find the lyrics-only-version
of the nine songs that make up this cycle. If you would like to accompany yourself on ukulele or guitar, find relevant chord charts by following the links that will take you to the versions in our blog "Silly Songs and Satire".
1. PAIRS, to the tune of "Words" in the style of the Beegees
... the following songs in the style of "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer
9. LEGALISTIC DOUBLETS, in the style of "Supercalifragilistic..." from the musical "Mary Poppins"
