The mingling of English with French has also produced some of the most characteristic collocations of the “breaking and entering” and “goods and chattels” type, in which an English word is complemented by its French equivalent. The habit of using such couplings arose at a time when there were in the language both native English and borrowed French terms for the same referent. In this situation there was often a certain amount of doubt as to whether such “synonyms” meant exactly the same thing, and there developed a tendency to write in each alternative and rely on inclusiveness as a compensation for lack of precision. 

Thus, for instance, in this era of movement of French words into English some English testators, when making a will, began certifying themselves mentally fit in two languages. They said they were “in god mynde and saf memorye” (1402), and “hole of mynde & in my gode memorie being” (1418). Repetition and rhythm welded the Old English and the Old French words into one standard phrase mind and memory, where the two words stand, as it were, for one. 

The bilingual habit grew into a legal tradition that makes it fashionable to use many phrases made up of synonyms. Thus, in the earlier quoted Statute of 1731 we come across the phrase tongue and language, where the doubled English and French words are used to reinforce each other’s meaning. The custom of doubling bilingual synonyms spread to produce other combinations of synonyms, which have long since been used as legal stock-phrases, for example, last will and testament (Old English and Latin); force and effect, null and void (all-French); to have and to hold, by and with (all-English). 

The table gives a small selection of mixed-language doublets which have entered English since the Middle Ages. And it was not long before the habit of doubling became extended to pairs of words regardless of their language of origin. In such pairings as null and void, cease and desist, heirs and assigns, and aid and abet we see French words together. In have and hold, let or hindrance, and each and every, English words are together.

Not only pairs, but also groups of near synonyms are similarly coordinated. Thus, in the language of wills, we “give, devise, and bequeath” the “rest, residue, and remainder” of our worldly possessions to our “heirs, successors, and assigns.” This “Rule of Threes” has a distinguished ancestry in the law. Some of these strings of synonyms contain words of subtly different meaning; others contain “pyramiding” words (one contained inside the second, and both contained inside the third); and some are piled on because of the form and procedural requirements of a legal document. The examples include:

There are even quadruplets, such as in lieu, in place, instead, and in substitution of (French / French / English / French or Latin).