Anyone who's watched CW's Arrow would recognize this line immediately:
They've got guns. You've got a bow and arrow.
They never say a bow and arrows. They never say a bow and an arrow. They say a bow and arrow, which still sounds idiomatic. I'm trying to make sense of it. These are the explanations I came up with.
-
arrow here is an uncountable noun.
- However, OD doesn't list any specific uncountable senses of the word. And phrases like
a quantity of arrow
sound wrong. The Oxford Dictionaries entry lists the bow and arrow phrase as an example, though.
- However, OD doesn't list any specific uncountable senses of the word. And phrases like
-
a bow and arrow is an idiom meaning a bow and a set of arrows (and maybe a quiver).
- Again, I can't find this idiom under arrow or bow. So I'm not sure if this is right.
-
They're talking about just one arrow (which is on the bow at the time).
- If that's the case, why drop the article?
Also, I can't think of any analogical phrases. Is a gun and bullet
a thing? I think one would say "I've got a gun and bullets".
Please help me explain the singular arrow here.
EDIT: Just so it's clear, I'm specifically interested in the usage of a
before the set phrase bow and arrow. And the reason for the singular form of arrow in the phrase.
Similar set phrases have been pointed out to me in the comments:
- ‘a knife and fork’: one fork (presumably)
- ‘a fish and chips’: many chips (presumably)
But: ‘a bow and arrow’: many arrows (presumably)
I'm still curious.
Best Answer
The expression “bow and arrow” is an example of siamese twins, also known as irreversible binomials, binomials, binomial pairs, freezes and nonreversible pairs in linguistics. There are several posts on EL&U that talk about this language feature which is not exclusive to English.
Thus ‘word-pairs’ such as bed and breakfast; birds and bees; cat and mouse; Adam and Eve; fish and chips, and trinomials such as: blood, sweat and tears, and lock, stock and barrel are clichés whose word order is normally fixed.
Using the OP's example, people rarely say or write: “arrow and bow”; “arrows and bows”; “bows and arrows”; or “a bow and an arrow”.
See also the recent EL&U question Why do we say ‘kith & kin’ and not ‘kin & kith’?
However, bow and arrow is quite unique, it ought to be bow and arrows, inasmuch as the first noun is singular (because we use ‘a bow’,) and its corresponding partner, arrow(s), should be plural because an archer uses more than one arrow to shoot. Instead, both terms are singular, they seem to follow the unspoken rule that pair nouns in binomials remain either singular or plural, such as: mother and child; chalk and cheese; friend and foe; hammer and nail. Or plural as in: brothers and sisters; birds and bees; ladies and gentlemen; and odds and ends.
Occasionally, the first noun is singular or uncountable whilst the second is plural;
e.g. fish and chips; bacon and eggs; and fun and games.
But even rarer are the instances where the first noun is plural followed by a singular or uncountable noun: strawberries and cream; pickles and ice cream, were the only examples I could come up with.
According to Cooper and Ross (1975:65-66) cited by Susan Mollin (The (Ir)reversibility of English Binomials...)
Where does the singular countable noun arrow fit here? Apparently it defies the twenty principles listed, bow being singular, should be followed by the plural noun arrows. However, the order of the two nouns do comply with Cooper and Ross's semantic and phonological constraints: bow is the source of power hence it earns first position; it is monosyllabic and therefore must precede arrow which is bisyllabic.
Moreover, the/a bow and arrow, along with its timeless image, have both become symbolic and iconic. We associate the phrase and image with the sport, archery; military warfare; hunting; mythology and love.
2008, Basic Illustrated Archery [emphasis mine]
British English corpus
And finally, looking at Google Ngram, we see that the expressions: “a bow and arrows” (blue line) and “his bow and arrows” (red line) were more common in the 18th and 19th century than its modern day counterpart, “a bow and arrow” (green line)
If we compare the bare binomials bow and arrow (blue line) with bow and arrows (red line) we see that the latter form is still used, but its marked descent began in the 1920s. Ngram
Citations of “bow and arrows”
1799, The New Robinson Crusoe… By Joachim Heinrich Campe
1835, Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle
1853, English Forests and Forest Trees,…
1855, The New Church Repository and Monthly Review
1928, My People, the Sioux; Page 9
1941, An Apache Life-Way
1954, Boys' Life, page 51