Welcome to the Echo-Word Reduplication Lexicon page.
The purpose of this Lexicon page is to gather and create a lexicon of
echo-word reduplicative expressions in English. Phrases like
helter-skelter, hodge-podge, peg-leg, ding-dong, tick-tock, shilly-shally,
wishy-washy, and many
others have been around in English for a long time, and some of them are
found in standard dictionaries. The process is still productive, and many
new phrases are created every day. This Lexicon seeks to record these and
create a searchable data-base that people can use on the Web.
My view of this word-formation process is that there are a number of
different sub-varieties or types:
- Type 1: CV1C-CV2C. This is the
type where the vowel changes, e.g. shilly-shally, tick-tock,
ding-dong, pitter-patter, etc. Often the vowel in the first item is
a high vowel, and the second vowel is a low(er) vowel, with the high-vowel
part often perceived as "smaller" than the other part (i.e. a "tick" is
smaller, lighter, quieter etc. than a "tock"). This type often involves
some onomatopeia, i.e. the sounds in question "symbolize" something, but
the meaning of the two elements is shared except for the difference in
size, weight, volume, etc. (i.e. a "pitter" is a smaller version of a
"patter"). In other cases, there is no onomatopoeia, and the two elements
are derived from separate things, as in ficto-facto "a pastiche
of fiction and facts; a pseudo-documentary".
- Type2: C1VC(etc.) C2VC(etc.) In
this type, the initial consonant (or consonant cluster) is replaced by
another. This is not regular in English, though the Yiddish type
exemplifed by "fancy-shmancy" does regularly replace the first consonant
with [shm-]. But other possibilities exist, such as willy-nilly,
sci-fi, nitty-gritty etc. In this type, both elements have "meaning"
and may be derived from separate words or morphemes that have different
meanings, such as sci-fi from "sci[ence] fi[ction]." The vowel of
fi- is then changed to rhyme with that of sci-.
- Type 3: Portions of the rhyming or alliterative items are
identical, but there may be additional material that is extra , as
in dust-buster (cf. also fuzz-buster), Queen of Mean
(instead of *mean-queen), ass-gasket etc.
These may or may not belong here, but I feel that they should be included.
To use this database, or contribute to it, there are a number of options:
-
View
the lexical entries currently extant in the d-base.
- Search for a particular item;
- Add your own suggested
entry. (You will need to get a password from me to access the data-entry area.)
I hope you enjoy this business as much as I do. If you have any
suggestions for improvement of this stuff, please send me an email at:
haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu