Meaning:
A thing which has neither rhyme nor reason makes no sense, from either a
poetic or logical standpoint.
Background:
`Rhyme or reason' is first recorded by John Russell, in The Boke of Nurture,
circa 1460:
As for ryme or reson, ye forewryter was not to blame,
For as he founde hit afore hym, so wrote he ye same.
Nicolas Udall, in his translation of The first tome or volume of the
paraphrase of Erasmus upon the Newe Testament, in 1548, used the more usual
negative form `rhyme nor reason'
Seeyng there is nether ryme ne reason in saing ye one eiuill spirite driueth
out an other eiuil spirite.
This line is best known from Shakespeare - initially in Comedy of Errors, 1590:
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:
Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?
The bard must have liked the line as he used it again in As You Like It, 1600:
ROSALIND: But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
ORLANDO: Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Market moves rarely go quietly without someone explaining in their wake. There
are no lack of ideas as to why the prices of stocks, gold, or treasury yields,
for example, go up or down or stay flat for the day. It takes real talent to
connect seemingly unrelated events or to expound at length on the obvious. But
even I can imagine an AI app, say with a name like "The Theorizer," given a few
words, to spout out a plausible story for a tick with both good rhyme and reason.
