Les composés bi-adjectivaux

Les composés bi-adjectivaux regroupent 47 unités lexicales formées d’adjectifs et/ou de participes passés employés comme adjectifs ¹⁰⁰ :

alive and kicking/well	down-and-dirty	prim and proper
black-and-blue	down-and-out	quick-and-dirty
black-and-tan	fast and furious	ready and waiting
black-and-white	fine and dandy	rough-and-ready
bloodied but unbowed	footloose and fancy-free	sadder but wiser
born and bred	free and easy	safe and sound
bound and determined	free and clear	short and sweet
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed	hale and hearty	signed and sealed
cheap and cheerful	hard-and-fast	slow but sure
cheap and nasty	high and dry	sweet-and-sour
common or garden	high-and-mighty	tried-and-true
cut-and-dried	hot and bothered	up-and-coming
dead-and-alive	hot and heavy	up-and-down
dead and buried/gone	joint and several	up-and-over
deaf-and-dumb	null and void	wild-and-woolly
done and dusted	open-and-shut

D’un point de vue formel, les composés biverbaux ne peuvent être distingués d’une suite coordonnée d’adjectifs. Quand, cas relativement rare, un adjectif composé scalaire constitué de deux formants monosyllabiques prend une marque de degré, la flexion est toujours double, comme le montrent les exemples suivants, relevés dans FindArticles :

‘“Banks would be far safer and sounder .”, Henry Kaufman, US News & World Report, 25 février 1991.’ ‘“It would be safer and sounder to seek openly to establish a balance between the res-ponsibilities of a superpower and those of a democracy.”, A Present of Things Past, de Theodore Draper, 2000, Transaction Publishers, p. 113.’ ‘“But such sentiment hasn’t extinguished efforts to make prospectuses shorter and sweeter .”, Russ Wiles, The Chicago Sun-Times, 1 avril 2002.’ ‘“Keep paragraphs short and sweet. Keep sentences shorter and sweeter .”,Jobsearch.net, de Carrie Straub, 1997, Thomson Crisp Learning, p. 86.’

D’un point de vue sémantique, les composés biverbaux ont divers comportements remarquables. Plusieurs d’entre eux ont une acception répertoriée métaphorique :

‘ black-and-white : “OPPOSITE SIDES IN AN ARGUMENT ARE LIKE OPPOSITE COLORS.”
bloodied but unbowed : “PEOPLE ARE LIKE COMBATANTS.”
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed : “HUMANS ARE LIKE SQUIRRELS.”
dead and buried : “ISSUES ARE LIKE HUMANS.”
high and dry : “HUMANS ARE LIKE BOATS.”’

D’autres — bound and determined, fine and dandy, hale and hearty, null and void, prim and proper, wild and woolly — résultent de l’assemblage de quasi-synonymes, et sont donc tautologiques. L’allitération est par ailleurs un trait remarquable de cette sous-classe, car dix-huit composés sur 47 partagent une même attaque :

black-and-blue

born and bred

bright-eyed and bushy-
tailed

cheap and cheerful

deaf-and-dumb

done and dusted

down-and-dirty

fast and furious

footloose and fancy-free

hale and hearty

hot and heavy

prim and proper

rough-and-ready

safe and sound

signed and sealed

sweet-and-sour

tried-and-true

wild-and-woolly

Pour finir, on peut noter dans deux cas l’existence de variantes synonymiques tronquées : bright-eyed est synonyme de bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (RHUD, MEDAL, OALD7) et waiting a le même sens que ready and waiting (WN2.1).