Nook and cranny

It is curious how English throws up little idiosyncrasies where obsolete words only exist in certain idioms; nook and cranny is a prime example. Nook is an old word from the 1300s meaning corner, while cranny dates from about a hundred years later and means a crack or crevice. Tennyson wrote a poem in 1869 called Flower in a Crannied Wall, a line from which is “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of crannies.” Browning in Paracelsus (1835) wrote the following, “A privacy, an obscure nook for me.” It was odd that about this same time someone decided to put nook and cranny together in the idiom we know today. Who or why is not known. To this day, we still look in every nook and cranny when we search for things we have mislaid.