rhyme or reason, no

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Idioms and Phrases

An absence of common sense or reasonableness, as in This memo has no rhyme or reason . Closely related variants are without rhyme or reason , as in The conclusion of her paper was without rhyme or reason , and neither rhyme nor reason , as in Neither rhyme nor reason will explain that lawyer's objections . This term originated in French about 1475 and began to be used in English about a century later. Sir Thomas More is credited with saying of a mediocre book that a friend had put into verse, “Now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; whereas before it was neither rhyme nor reason.”

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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