Farzad Akmali Jan 1, 2011:

Exactly! Dear Simon,

You know there are two categories of اتباع, In the first one پایه comes first and in the second پایه comes second! The first category is divided into five subcategories, and بار و بندیل belongs to this subcategory (I try to post all of them soon in another entry)!
Anyway, the fifth one includes اتباع in which پایه and تابع start with the same letter:
بار و بندیل، پرت و پلا، جادو جنبل، etc!
Interestingly اتباع are also called ترکیبات عامیانه (informal/colloquial/slangy compounds) and مهملات /mohmalAt/ (balderdash compounds)!

SeiTT (asker) Jan 1, 2011:

بار و بندیل Dear Farzad,

How fascinating! Thank you so much. Turkish has a very similar phenomenon, by the way.

Given that بندیل has no independent meaning, at least as far as I've been able to determine, would “بار و بندیل” be an example of اتباع?

I'm pretty certain I've seen quite a few examples in Persian of similar-sounding words joined by و in which both words do have a dictionary meaning. Perhaps the Iranian people liked these expressions so much that they began to make up expressions using اتباع when no two similar words could be found?

Back to Turkish, what the Turks often do is to use a Turkish word and then intensify it with a Persian synonym: deli divane = stark, staring, raving mad, rezil rüsva = an utter disgrace (albeit the first word of the pair is an Arabic loanword)… there are others but I can't think of them now. No doubt as soon as I send this off I'll think of several, being a past master at esprit d'escalier!
http://wordsmith.org/words/esprit_d_escalier.html

All the best, and many thanks again,

Simon

Farzad Akmali Jan 1, 2011:

Yes! Examples! Dear Simon,

these kinds of compound words are called اتباع "atba'"! They are composed of two parts, the main part which is meaningful is called پایه and the meaningless part is called تابع!
پایه may come first or second, and there is an /o/ (hidden or not) between the two parts, they are somehow similar phoneticly:
بر و بچ (بر و بچه ها)، کار و بار، بقّال چقّال، خوش و بش etc.!

SeiTT (asker) Jan 1, 2011:

در و Thank you, excellent links!
Is the در و part a kind of intensifier?

Farzad Akmali Jan 1, 2011:

Different ideas with no documentary evidence! Some say it is of Hebrew origin some say it is an Armenian word and some others believe it is an English word which stands for "Designated ugly fat friend!" Please visit:
http://sinozit.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/57/

http://nanarsin.blogfa.com/post-198.aspx

Ebrahim Golavar Jan 1, 2011:

it is just a slang used by most young people.

SeiTT (asker) Jan 1, 2011:

Etymology/origin Many thanks. Any insight into the etymology/origin of the phrase, please?