Jerrell in San Antonio, Texas, is curious about the term helter-skelter, meaning “haphazardly.” English is full of such reduplicatives, also called rhyming jingles, flip-flop words, or echo words. They fall into three categories: one-syllable rhymes such as choo-choo and doo-doo; ablaut reduplications involving a vowel change, such as clip-clop, chit-chat, and wishy-washy; and rhyming reduplicatives that involve a change in the initial sound, such as helter-skelter, super-duper, lovey-dovey, hurly-burly, willy-nilly, and higgledy-piggledy. The reduplicative term boris-noris, which found in 19th-century dialect dictionaries, means “carelessly” or “recklessly.” This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...