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
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...