During an idle moment at a High Court hearing on the Burke case recently, I found myself wondering about the difference in meaning, if any, between the words “shouting” and “roaring”.
Not that there was any of either going on that day. It was a quiet event, dominated by the delivery of a judgment on matters arising from a previous hearing.
But that one had been raucous. So much so that the phrase “shouting and roaring” occurred at least seven times in Judge Brian Cregan’s summary, typically when he complained: “Such was the level of shouting and roaring directed at the court, that I simply could not be heard ...”
We say “shouting and roaring” all the time in everyday speech, of course. And when we do, usually, it’s a rhetorical device known as pleonasm: saying the same thing twice for dramatic effect.
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Even Shakespeare did it on occasion, as for example in All’s Well That Ends Well, when he wrote poetically about “th’ inaudible and noiseless foot of time”.
That is not to be confused with pleonasm’s first cousin, hendiadys, in which a compound phrase, often adjective plus noun, is separated into two nouns for greater effect.
A thing full of furious sound thereby becomes a thing “full of sound and fury” and, so doing, ends up in Macbeth (although “sound and fury” could also have been useful in the Burke ruling – “inaudible and noiseless” not so much).
But there is, I suppose, a difference between “shouting” and “roaring”, even if the phrase is rarely intended to convey it.
A shout is a sharp, short-lived noise. A roar is deeper and more prolonged. We shout at referees or the television during a football match (or maybe I should speak for myself). We roar on our team.
In medical terms, it’s like the difference between an acute illness and a chronic one, although in Ireland at least, shouting is rarely fatal. It’s the other word that can imply a terminal condition.
Hence the old curse, still popular in places: “May you die roaring.” This was sometimes extended to “ ... die roaring for a priest”. But roaring in general worked too, with local variations, including one from (I think) Kilkenny, where you could “die roaring like Doran’s bull”.
Getting back to the courts, and pleonasm, Irish and British law is mysteriously replete with phrases that to the casual ear seem to say the same thing twice, yet often with ominous effect.
An ordinary person might ask you to “cease” doing something, for example. A lawyer will require you to “cease and desist” from doing it, and then you’re in trouble, if you weren’t already.
Similarly, if you have been foolish enough to “aid” someone in a criminal enterprise, you could perhaps plead innocence or ignorance.
If you’re deemed to have “aided and abetted” the crime, however, then you’re up to your neck in it. Not only are prosecutors likely to say so under oath, they may “depose and say” so, for bad luck.
There are any number of these verbal couplings scattered about the law books. Take for example:
All and sundry, arbitrary and capricious, covenant and agree, deem and consider, due and payable, final and conclusive, fit and proper, for and on behalf of, furnish and supply, have and hold, hue and cry, heirs and successors, legal and valid, null and void, part and parcel, perform and discharge, signed and sealed, sole and exclusive, ways and means, wear and tear.
And I gather that some date from Anglo-Norman times, when there might be subtle differences between similar terms in English and French. But most now sound like mere pleonasms, as much a part of the theatre of courts as wigs used to be.
Then there are legal triplets. To the untrained ear, some of those appear arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable, if not null, void and of no effect. If your solicitor is in the habit of putting them in letters, you might want to check you’re not paying him by the word.
But even in the very expensive world of TV or radio advertising, where every word and the time taken to say it costs money, legal doublets linger.
Witness the bit at the end of ads, insisted on by legal departments but sped up by actors, wherein they warn that the value of your investment may fall as well as rise, etc. You’d think somebody somewhere would by now have decided it was sufficient to say “terms apply” or “conditions apply”. Instead, still, it’s always both.
Legal doublets will dog you all your life if you’re not careful. Even at the end, there’s no escape. They won’t just let you make a last will then, it has to be a last will and testament. And, even if you think you’re Shakespeare, you can’t just give someone your second-best bed. No. You have to “give and bequeath” it, or the bed may not have a leg to stand on.
