Languages have a variety of means to express emphasis, including repetition, lengthening of vowels, raising and lowering of normal pitch, pleonasm (and other species of hypertrophy), etc. In English the typical alliterative phrase one finds in paronomastic constructions (e.g., “through thick and thin”) is particularly effective because it utilizes the poetic principle of similarity amid difference to seal the semantic bargain. “Done and dusted” is to be heard in British English but has yet to attach itself to cis-Atlantic speech. It’s just a matter of time.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
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