Raggle-taggle and friends

First published 10 January 2011 @ just some words

Knock-knock, zigzag, hobson-jobson — words and phrases like these appear in English thanks to reduplication. According to Wikipedia, there are three types of English reduplication: exact, rhyming and ablaut (which is a fancy word for vowel permutation).

Exact reduplication is self-explanatory.

bling-bling	expensive and ostentatious possessions
chop-chop	quickly, without delay
goody-goody	affectedly or ingratiatingly good or proper
hush-hush	secret
no-no	taboo
so-so	average

We are often creating exact reduplications on the fly when we want to stress that something is “real” or “authentic” (as opposed to its pale imitation). For example, in an interview with Tomer Zvulun I read:

You’ve been Assistant and Associate Director here at Seattle Opera in the past. What’s it like to come back, now as Director Director?

Apparently, “Director Director” here means “real” Director.

Although their parts rhyme, rhyming reduplication may be not the best term for the phrases in the table below. They are not just rhymes — apart from the first consonant, they are identical.

bee’s knees	something excellent
hanky-panky	mischievous behaviour; sexual intercourse
heebie-jeebies	a feeling of anxiety, fear etc.
higgledy-piggledy	haphazard
hocus-pocus	(an act of) trickery
hodge-podge	a variety of miscellaneous things
hoity-toity	snobbish
hotchpotch	hodge-podge
holy moly	an expression of surprise
honey bunny	honey, sweetheart
hurly-burly	uproar, tumult
itsy-bitsy	teeny-weeny
mumbo jumbo	nonsense, gibberish
namby-pamby	insipid, sentimental, weak
nitty-gritty	details, nuts and bolts
palsy-walsy	being or appearing to be very intimate
ragbag	hotchpotch
raggle-taggle	motley, mixed
razzle-dazzle	glamour
roly-poly	short and plump (person)
super-duper	superb
teeny-weeny	minuscule
Tex-Mex	a fusion of Texan and Mexican (cuisine)
walkie-talkie	handheld transceiver
willy nilly	whether wanted or not

An amateur etymologist in me would like to see Latin nolens volens not only in Italian volente o nolente (that is kind of obvious) but also in Russian волей-неволей, English willy-nilly, Dutch willens of onwillens — of course, modified according to the law of Hobson-Jobson. But what about Albanian dashur padashur, Dutch goedschiks of kwaadschiks, French bon gré mal gré, Greek εκών άκων, Hungarian kénytelen-kelletlen, Malay mau tak mau, Polish chcąc nie chcąc or Romanian vrând-nevrând? It looks like we humans just love to rhyme.

A special case of rhyming reduplication is so-called shm-reduplication. It is often used to convey a dismissive or ironic feeling for a thus reduplicated word, as in metalinguistic, shmetalinguistic or forbidden, shmershmidden (courtesy of Bender Rodríguez).

In ablaut reduplication, it is the vowel (typically, the first vowel) that change. Many words formed this way are onomatopoeic.

bric-a-brac	knick-knacks
chiffchaff	a warbler, Phylloscopus collybita
chit-chat	mindless banter
criss-cross	move back and forth
flim-flam	fraud, deception
flip-flop	a type of footwear; to alternate back and forth
hip-hop	an Afro-American urban youth culture
jibber-jabber	blather
knick-knack	trinket
mingle-mangle	hodgepodge
mishmash	mingle-mangle
ping-pong	table tennis
pitter-patter	repetitive sound (of rain etc.)
riff-raff	rabble, common people
shilly-shally	to procrastinate or vacillate (“shall I?”)
sing-song	song-like
telltale	talebearer, gossip
tip-top	excellent
wishy-washy	wavering; watery

Both rhyming and ablaut reduplications can be further classified like this:

1. A combination of one meaningful word and its “mutated” form present for emphasis: jibber-jabber, super-duper
2. Apparently nonsensical combination of two meaningful words: bee’s knees
3. Apparently nonsensical combination of two nonsense words: heebie-jeebies
4. Meaningful combination of two meaningful words: telltale, walkie-talkie

One can argue that the latter case has nothing to do with reduplication because the both parts already existed on their own.

Phrases like creepy-crawly, hunky-dory and topsy-turvy are similar to reduplications (in that they sound like baby talk) but they are neither rhyming nor reduplications.