rhyme or reason

• rhyme nor reason

Calque of Middle French n'y avoir ryme ne raison (Eustache Deschamps), attributed to the poet Edmund Spenser in a conversation with Queen Elizabeth I.^[1] (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced? Particularly: “contradicting sources”)

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rhyme or reason (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic, chiefly in the negative) Logic; common sense.

   Prices vary considerably from one town to another with no apparent rhyme or reason.

   He would often fly into an unexpected rage without rhyme or reason.

   • 1992 February 2, Ed Zirnheld, “Disappointed”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 28, page 4:

     While many of your essays were interesting, some seemed little more than self-promotion on the part of authors. I wished there had been a central essay to anchor the others or some kind of discernable rhyme or reason to their placement. As it was, I could not help but feel that it was a mish-mash of unrelated and poorly edited information.

• Almost always used in a negative form, particularly with no and, adverbially, without. May also occur as rhyme nor reason, e.g. after neither.

• Gary Martin (1997–) “Rhyme or reason”, in The Phrase Finder.