We often say “without further ado”. Why does it sound weird to say “with further ado” to mean the opposite?

Question

Is there also a reason that can be explained by linguistics?

In: Other

Answer 1

In linguistics this is called a “collocation” I think — the term for groupings of words in certain contexts that are ‘normal’ by habit.

In the example you’ve chosen it’s pretty hard to imagine somebody promising to do something, or that something be done, “with further ado”… I kinda feel like ” to-do” might be more common in the positive than “ado” but you’d need to do a corpus linguistics study to find out and I ain’t got the skills.

But basically the right combinations ‘feel right’ because they’re used more often.

You can probably spot collocations yourself — does “assumption” go better with “do” or “make”? Does investment go better with “sound” or “firm”? And so on!

Collocations are a hurdle for learners of other languages — they are a kind idiomatic clusterings which grammar rules do not hint at.