This Mix and Match quiz challenges you to find pairs and opposites.
'Mix and Match' is the wording on signs that you sometimes see in shops where you can pick your own items in a range of colours, flavours etc.
English has many pairs of words ~ often as synonyms or antonyms ~ and which hang well together by their sound, because they alliterate or rhyme.
How many of these do you know, or would you recognise?
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Answer 3 is right, though 'rack' (so some dictionaries suggest) may well be a misspelling of another form of the verb 'wreck'.
Answers 1 & 2 are nicely alliterative but these are each made-up phrases that would not be recognised as standard. The phrase in Answer 4 certainly does exist and refers to a state of recreation after hard work, but this is not appropriate in scale or nature to the longterm mass redundancies when an industrial plant closes down. |
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Answer 3 is the standard phrase; Answer 2 is also a recognised phrase, but hardly appropriate to the serious (& potentially dangerous) matter of moving traffic.
The outer Answers (1 & 4) are each 'fake phrases'. |
Answer 1 is correct, if a rather shabby piece of English; it's certainly what many relieved people say!
Answer 2 dates from the earlier days of voice-radio communication, particularly among uniformed personnel (e.g. the armed and emergency forces): they would say 'Over' when they wanted the person at the other end of a conversation to speak, and 'Over and out' to end the conversation completely. 'Dead and buried' (Answer 3) would be tempting, but inappropriate, in these circumstances; Answer 4 may seem quite fun, but is a made-up example. |
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The other three Answers are all straight 'fakes'!
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All the upper three Answers were fine, and 'bits and pieces' might have made the most obvious 4th acceptable option.
'Odds and sods' (Answer 3) has faintly rude overtones (un-proven, depending on what your hearer might think 'sod' means), and is probably the least formal version in what's already a clearly informal context. You may also have met a related phrase 'flotsam and jetsam', referring to waste materials washed up on a beach by the tide. Technically, 'flotsam' = floating things, while 'jetsam' = items that have been thrown (e.g. overboard from ships, or off the land or maybe a pier); but by the time the sea has heaved them about, it probably makes little difference. Driftwood, such as a complete tree trunk, would presumably not count as 'jetsam'! |
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Answer 2 is the correct one, though the use of 'rhyme' is metaphorical (to suggest any form of consistency or symmetry in what's being done).
'Rum and Raisin' was a very popular ice-cream flavour at around the time of the early home freezers in the 1970s. As usual, the other two potential Answers were 'distractors' here. |
Answer 1 would have been a (relatively!) 'fresh' meal, prepared from scratch; but Answer 2, catching the sounds of the food in the pan during the cooking, is the right one.
Answer 3 is a potential and alliterative 'fake', likewise Answer 4. |
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There are still plenty of other acceptable phrases that would have provided a fourth Answer, such as 'to and fro', 'hither and yon' etc.
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Answer 2 also has a sibilant equivalent pair in French ('sain et sauf').
Answer 1 is borrowed from the National Anthem (and was quoted by the Chairman of the Olympic Committee after the 2012 Games had happened successfully in London, in the 60th anniversary year of the Queen's Accession). Answer 3 refers more to someone who is still in good health at a great age, rather than necessarily after one long and tiring trip. Answer 4 is a standard pair ~ but surely irrelevant in the circumstances of the Question. |
Answer 1 is an established phrase (suggesting someone who has worked hard, becoming ~ probably ~ sweaty and frustrated), but while the tea is hot and the person has 'bothered' to make it for you, this really doesn't quite fit the circumstances.
Answer 3 might describe a handshake, or the business style of a leader (or teacher): someone who expects their authority to be respected, but is not overly formal for the sake of it.
Answer 4 is an invented 'distractor'; as with Answer 1, it doesn't work well here ~ since the 'tired'-ness applies to 'you' while the 'tastiness' refers to the tea (we hope), rather than both ideas applying to the same side of the situation.