Talk:Hendiadys/Archive 1

To help and X

Is the expression "help and X" (where X can be "explain," "find," etc.) also considered an instance of hendiadys? Because when we say, "This finding may help and explain what really heppened," in fact we're saying, "This finding may help to explain..." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.139.226.34 (talk • contribs) 09:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

No - it's just incorrect grammar. You want an infinitive, not a noun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psusennes (talk • contribs) 21:44, 23 May 2007

How is this a matter of grammar rather than semantics? And why aren't the other examples, such as those in the article, "just incorrect grammar" in the same way? What has the instance being talked about here to do with nouns, anyway? -- Smjg 22:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Hendiadys in Shakespeare

I was just talking about hendiadys with my colleague here at work - as one does of a Wednesday morning ... The subject of hendiadys in Shakespeare, not just referring to Hamlet, is examined very well in Frank Kermode's book 'Shakespeare's Language'[ISBN 0713993782, although this the hardback version]. My favourite example is 'sound and fury'. It means 'furious sound'; two nouns suggests fury as a separate entity to go with the sound, thus reinforcing the image.

The use of 'and' detailed in the above post is a common error, using 'and' instead of 'to' ('Can you try and understand..?'), but I'm not sure it qualifies as hendiadys. Having said that, and in fact for 'try and understand', it probably does...

Amazon bit here: http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Language-Frank-Kermode/dp/0374527741/ref=sid_dp_dp/104-7099401-5518308. mark Mark woff 09:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"The kingdom and the power and the glory"

This phrase from the Lord's Prayer (a later pious addition to Jesus's words in the Gospel) has been offered as an examply of polysyndeton by several authors including Arthur Quinn in Figures of Speech. A recent editor deleted the example, not on grammatical grounds, but based on his/her religious interpretation of this phrase. Religious people might interpret the phrase in multiple ways, but I don't think that's grounds to prevent its use as a striking and familiar example of a grammatical technique. betsythedevine 15:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Hendiadys vs. zeugma

I've removed the "Widespread examples" section, because it seems to equate hendiadys with a sort of zeugma, which it's not. Hendiadys assumes that "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory" is an expansion of "Thine is the powerful, glorious kingdom", not a contraction of "Thine is the kingdom, and thine is the power, and thine is the glory". If the former interpretation is correct, the example is wrong; and if the latter - if they're meant as three separate entities, kingdom and power and glory - then it's not actually hendiadys and should still be removed. Am I wrong in this belief? (Widespread examples also contained a single example, "verve and vigour", which also doesn't actually appear to be hendiadys - just a pair of related but separate attributes.) Etherjammer (talk) 02:10, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

What about other PsOS?

Why does this article focus entirely on nouns, as if hendiadys doesn't exist for any other parts of speech?

It seems that the most obvious examples involve

• adjectives, such as "nice and warm"
• verbs, not just such debated cases as "try and help", but also more involved constructions like "be a good boy and do your homework".

-- Smjg (talk) 16:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

This article focuses on nouns because the classic definition of hendiadys was limited to nouns. [1]. But I see that Merriam Webster at least has expanded its definition to include other forms of speech: "the expression of an idea by the use of usually two independent words connected by and (as nice and warm) instead of the usual combination of independent word and its modifier (as nicely warm)." [2] betsythedevine (talk) 21:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Be a good boy and do your homework is actually an instance of a "conditional and" as in Be clever and buy SUPERPRODUCT, which means "If you are clever, you will by SUPERPRODUCT". Same for conditional OR: "Stay away or I cut your balls off". 80.61.183.71 (talk) 15:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this. If you're asked "Are you going to be a good boy and do your homework?" then the answer is "yes" only if you actually are going to do your homework. According to your analysis, the answer would be "yes" if you're going to neither be a good boy nor do your homework. -- Smjg (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Use in the bible "more controversial"

Hendiadys is a Greek term, and hendiadys is a common Greek trope that was probably familiar to writers of the New Testament (written in Greek) but not necessarily used by writers of the Old Testament. Not every linking of two nouns by "and" is necessarily hendiadys. One of the sources recently added looks reputable and scholarly, the other is just somebody's blog and not appropriate for a Wikipedia source. I don't see a reputable source saying that hendiadys in the Bibile is "controversial," so I am removing the material from the blog and the WP:OR statement that it is "controversial" unless an appropriate source turns up for that. betsythedevine (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Merism

I'm unclear on the relationship between Hendiadys and Merism. Are they synonyms, one a subset of the other, or distinct? --Wcoole (talk) 21:18, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

When it could have been expressed in a different way

I don't think that this is an improvement. Note the above remark about the distinction with merism as an example of something which hasn't been addressed. TomS TDotO (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I tried a quick patch here, which I am not at all satisfied with, but seems better than what it replaces. Some problems with what it replaces are: (1) the references are not in proper form, and not to appropriate sources (2) the example from Swedish does not seem to be a hendiadys but is just a conjunction (3) it doesn't improve upon what is already there. It is true that the definitive phrase is difficult to understand, but the replacement does not at all explain it. TomS TDotO (talk) 10:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)