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The higgledy-piggledy world of repetitious words
As a licensed language columnist, I have several official duties: myth-dispelling, dictionary-collecting, word-celebrating, and trend-noticing are a few.But my favorite job is introducing civilians to the names of the linguistic concepts they encounter every day-like
nonce words,
eggcorns, and
snowclones.Here's another. If you've ever said nyah-nyah on a teeter-totter while waving a pom-pom, then you already have firsthand knowledge of one of the most neato of all the ways words are made:
reduplication. That's the technical term for the sound-repeating process that creates words like
mumbo-jumbo,
heebie-jeebies,
night-night, and
brouhaha.Some reduplicative words rhyme, like
whoo-hoo,
fuddy-duddy,
killer-diller, and
piggy-wiggy. Others switch vowels instead of consonants, like
tick-tock,
hip-hop,
pitter-patter, and
flim-flam. In some cases, the whole word is repeated, as in
rah-rah,
bye-bye,
night-night, and
doo-doo. Though words of this type are used by people of all ages, they contain an unmistakable whiff of childhood, which is why I seldom refer to my frequent groin injuries as boo-boos of the no-no region.If you're thinking "boo-boo, schmoo-boo", I should hire you as assistant vice-columnist, because that's a perfect segue to
depreciative (or
schm)
reduplication. Just as
schmuck,
schmo,
schlub,
schmendrick, and
schlemiel appear on very few successful resumes, the addition of the
schm sound is an all-powerful diminisher. Anyone with Google and a dream can find examples like
almond, schmalmond;
Shakespeare, Schmakespeare and
velvet, schmelvet.Then there's contrastive reduplication, which you may know if you've ever been in a relationship that wasn't a
relationship-relationship.
Van-van,
bank-bank, and
coffee-coffee have been used to distinguish typical vans, banks, and java from mini-vans, ATM machines, and sex.
Dead-dead means life-has-ended-dead, not undead or brain-dead, while
date-date is often used to distinguish a real, romantic date from just a social meeting. I thought I was original when I said that a friend of a friend had moved beyond passive-aggressive to
aggressive-aggressive, but the same coinage appeared in
Felicity,
I Heart Huckabees, and a
recent Judy McGuire column. Enough examples to please a reduplication-holic and choke a horse can be found
here.But if that's not enough, here's a lucky seven obscure-yet-fun-as-hell reduplicative words I hope you'll sprinkle into your Facebook updates and arrest warrants as needed:
kickie-wickieDefined by the
Oxford English Dictionary as "A jocular or ludicrous term for a wife," this silly-sounding word has a pedigree: Shakespeare used it in
All's Well That Ends Well. It appeared in one of the folios as
kicksie-wicksie, which is even more cutesy-wutesy.
nookie bookieThis is not a trained professional who accepts wagers on the odds of nookie. According to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang (HDAS), a
nookie bookie is a pimp.
prinkum-prankumThough I haven't seen this word turn up on many blogs or billboards, it actually has three separate meanings, spanning the 1500s all the way up to the 1980s. The first meaning, which was rare even then, meant a prank, and the second was a cushion-dance-which sounds like a euphemism a covert nookie-bookie might use-but is actually a real dance the OED defines as "A round dance, formerly danced at weddings, in which the women and men alternately knelt on a cushion to be kissed." Finally,
prinkum-prankum means "Fine attire; fine clothes and adornments"-in other words, stuff that is hoity-toity.
ooglie-boogliesThis word, coined on
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, was well-defined by the slayer's little sister Dawn: "So what have we got? What kind of ooglie-booglies? Lizardy types, or zombies, or vampires, or what?"
ibby-jibbiesOoglie-booglies tend to give all but the hardiest of citizens the
ibby-jibbies-a variation of
heebie-jeebies Grant Barrett recorded in his indispensible
Double-tongued Dictionary.hunkum-bunkumThough
bunkum is a form of
bunk,
hunkum-bunkum seems to be closer to hunky-dory: it means everything is okey-dokey. A 1913 citation from the HDAS shows it in use: "What hunkum-bunkum bread you have to-day!"
frabbajabbaAnother HDAS word (used in
West Side Story) that Mr. T would likely enjoy: it means jibber-jabber, and I hope to someday tell someone "Don't give me any of that frabbajabba, kind sir!"
