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Word of the day: reduplication

This is the technique of taking a word and saying it twice in quick succession but changing one of the vowels or consonants in the process.

Among the many examples in English are: dilly-dally, zig-zag, pitter-patter, criss-cross, helter-skelter, hurly-burly, happy-clappy.

And what leads me to mention this? I’m currently reading a fascinating book – one of the six I received for Christmas – entitled “The Story Of English In 100 Words” by David Crystal. One of his chosen words is an example of reduplication.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.