# Fire and Brimstone **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 13, 2000, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601 "2000-02-13T06:42:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wiploc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/67e7ee/32.png) [@wiploc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wiploc)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/1 "2000-02-13T06:42:00Z")
The book Figures Of Speech, Twenty Ways To Turn A Phrase, discusses the nounization of adjectives for the purpose of emphasis. If you refer to a “white house” the houseness seems more important than the whiteness. To avoid that misplaced empasis in the case of the burning brimstone, the adjective is converted into a noun. Thus we get fire and brimstone, to take your focus off the chemical and get it onto the combustion. regards, charlie ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2000, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/2 "2000-02-14T06:05:00Z")
The link to the column is: [What’s up with fire and brimstone? What’s brimstone?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbrimstone.html) Wiploc, I’m not sure what you’re sayin’ here. Are you saying that the expression “fire and brimstone” came about as a way to avoid “fiery brimstone”? I guess I’d like a citation on that. 'Cause, on the other side, we’ve got the Biblical text that uses the expression “fire and brimstone”, two separate nouns. I guess it’s possible that “nounization” (cough, cough, choke) was happening back in 1200 BC or so, but I’d want to be convinced. I think it more likely that fire and sulphur were different but related nouns, and the combination was for emphasis. Like “Hell and damnation!” or “Peanut butter and jelly” ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2000, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/3 "2000-02-16T06:51:00Z")
Dex, he’s referring to the old rhetorical device of avoiding a phrase like “X-ish Y” by using “X and Y” to mean the same thing. It has a Greek name that I don’t recall but which always reminded me of Mephistopheles (entirely appropriately to the topic at hand!) when I heard it. And yes, while such tropes are common in older English and particularly in KJV Biblical English, I suspect the reference was intentionally (1) fire and (2) sulphur. It’s worth noting, too, that a burn from sulphur hurts more per degree of burn than one from a “cleaner” burning substance. Hence “brimstone” reinforces the painfulness of the eternal fire set aside for fundamentalist preachers – oops, wrong thread! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2000, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/4 "2000-02-15T20:09:00Z")
Yeah, I understood that, Polyc, but I’m saying that there is a difference between “hell and damnation” as a wossname for “hellish damnation” (if it is), compared to “peanut butter and jelly” which is NOT such a wossname (or whatever the Greek word is.) Since the term “fire and brimstone” comes directly from the Hebrew text, I am suspect of a claim that it was “originally” an adjective like “fiery brimstone” that got separated into two nouns… unless someone can show me that happened in ancient Hebrew. Even then, I think I’d be dubious. It rained fire upon Sodom. It rained sulphur upon Sodom. It rained fire AND sulphur upon Sodom. ---
**Author:** ![jens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jens)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2000, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/5 "2000-02-27T07:46:00Z")
metonymy? using a part as a symbol of the whole? ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2000, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fire-and-brimstone/1601/6 "2000-02-27T12:32:00Z")
From the French, “meto” meaning the Paris subway system, and “nymy” being the French version of the knights who say “ny”. Hence, a metonymy, meaning the long stick that goes tick-tock that musicians use to keep thyme.