2063: Im(par)sible Words Aug 8, 2020

Certain parts of whole phrases simply can't exist on their own, outside of the syntax in which they exist. These elements, such as 'jinks' of "high jinks", 'caboodle' of "kit and caboodle", or 'kith' in "kith and kin". There are plenty more, so leave it one in the comments if you know. Indeed, in some of these cases such as with 'caboodle', there is not even a totally clear meaning, whereas at least 'kith' means 'friends' or 'acquaintances', from the Old English for 'known' or in this sense 'familiar'. Other elements (in this case words) are meaningingful even if rarely parsed, like how "room and board" uses 'board' to mean food (or literally a table set with food) but outside of that phrase people would likely opt for another word.

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