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We often use conjunction 'and' in between two verbs, nouns or whatever we want to join. The order does not matter in most of the cases.

Jimmy and Jack are good friends; We are into software and hardware business; I like watching English and Hindi movies.

The order does matter in some cases...

She ran and came to me; I looked around and crossed the road - the reverse order won't work here.

Now the googly!

The batsman (in Cricket) is always caught and bowled. The fun is, the catch happens only after a ball being bowled! So, the batsman was bowled first and then got caught. Why not bowled and caught here?

Here it is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_rLd7Irtm0

My homework: I googled the term but could not get it.

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Where phrases are repeated a lot, conventions can arise. In this case, I learnt that in 'caught and bowled', 'bowled' refers to the bowler (and catcher), not the act of bowling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caught

Where there are two terms occurring together, joined by a conjunction, and the order cannot be reversed, because of convention, it is called a binomial pair (or Siamese twin - although I don't like that term).

For more info, and lots of great examples, see: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_twins_(English_language)

Thus, your example is a binomial pair, but the order of words does not go against the order of events (so you may be right that that is a rule), it only seems to. As with many binomial pairs, the reason for the order is not immediately obvious.

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  • thanks for the link but then my question typically asks the order and I already told that some words are formed just like that (maybe, rhyming words) and quite popular but then when the event happens in order, you cannot change it. Nobody can come and run fast, they run fast and come to us. – Maulik V♦ Mar 1 '14 at 9:59
  • OK, sorry I thought you were looking for a word to describe case where the order matters but is not necessarily obvious. This specific example is apparently because 'bowled' is "a shorthand for saying the catcher and bowler are the same player": en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caught – Chris M Mar 1 '14 at 10:14
  • We have a lot of phrases where the order is dictated by convention. "Cranny and nook", "cease and desist", "see and avoid", "aid and abet", and so on. – David Schwartz Mar 1 '14 at 10:33
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    @DavidSchwartz - Very true, although I think you might have one of those reversed. – J.R.♦ Mar 1 '14 at 11:20
  • @ChrisM True but then what wiki means there is 'bowled' not as a dismissal (bowled is a ball went into the stumps uprooting them or taking the bails off). But here, in my question it's bowled meaning threw a ball to the batsman. See the examples - Brian Lara is clean bowled by Bret Lee and Bret Lee bowled all of his overs very well. – Maulik V♦ Mar 1 '14 at 11:35

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