"Fiddle-faddle" and "jibber-jabber" are also common, the latter thanks to Mr. These days, it tends to refer to gobbledygook (not quite a reduplicative, but almost). The most famous is probably "mumbo jumbo," which originally referred to superstitious nonsense back in the 1700s.
Boston legal jibber jabber gif full#
The language of BS and nonsense is also full of reduplicates - maybe because the words themselves sound so nonsensical. Once in school, it's not long before kids learn to taunt each other with "Nyah nyah!" or the double reduplication "Nanny nanny boo boo!" I probably don't need to mention the prominence of "pee-pee" and "poo-poo" in a child's vocabulary and a parent's life. Just about all rugrats read about Humpty Dumpty, and "gee-gee" is a child's word for a horse from the 1800s. The original might be "Mama!" Anyone with a baby likely uses terms such as "choo-choo," "no-no," and "night-night." Infantile reduplication runs the gamut from good things ("Would you like your ba-ba?") to bad things ("Do you have a boo-boo?"). These reduplicates mimic the way children learn language. Reduplicative terms appear all over English but are prominent in a few areas, like the language of childhood and anything cutesy-wutesy. Grant Barrett, host of the public radio show "A Way with Words," notes via e-mail that even the word "reduplication" has an unnecessary frill: "I've always liked the 're' in 'reduplicate.' We're doing it again! It's right there in the word!"
My favorite type is "schm" reduplication, though some might say "Favorite, schmavorite!" All the types show that redundancy isn't a problem in word-making. Reduplication doesn't get any simpler than when the whole word is repeated, like when you pooh-pooh a couple's attempt to dress matchy-matchy. One type replaces a vowel while keeping the initial consonant, as in "flip-flop," "pish-posh," and "ping-pong." Another type keeps the vowel but replaces that first sound, as in "namby-pamby," "hanky-panky," "razzle-dazzle," and "timey-wimey," a word used by Dr. There are several kinds of reduplication.
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