This is my first question on this website, so I hope I don't embarrass myself.
While I was helping my friend study for the GRE exam, I noticed that a lot of the vocabulary lists contained two word expressions, which I had never seen before. They were used to describe such situations as confusion, a mixture and even certain adjectives.
I remember only a few right now, these being:
helter-skelter
hodge podge
hoi polloi
nitty-gritty
pell-mell
The way these were used in sentences simply excited me, due to the sheer beauty and the lack of their usage in common written expositions, these seem like a mystery to me, as they have evolved from many, many languages, with some having ambiguous origins, the contexts they are used in seem clear, and they seem to work so remarkably well whenever employed, and they just seem to add beauty to an otherwise ordinary sentence.
I was therefore wondering if someone here could please provide a reference for a list of these expressions and their meanings and context. Specifically, a list where the above mentioned expressions, with more of similar appearance abound.
I am sorry I don't even know the name of this type of expression, but again I was mesmerized by their beauty, elegance and mysterious origins.
