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.
Transcript of “Helter-Skelter Reduplicatives”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.
Hey there. Who’s this?
This is Jarrell, and I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.
Hi, Jarrell. Welcome to the show.
Hi. So about a month ago, I was listening to a political talk show on the radio, and there was a conversation between the interviewer and the guest, and they were talking about immigration.
And the guest said, well, immigration is important in this country, but we can’t just let people in helter-skelter.
And I was caught off guard. I’m like, helter-skelter? What does that mean?
And I thought, well, it probably means willy-nilly. And I’m like, wait, wait, wait. What does that mean?
So that’s why I’m calling you guys.
And you’re wondering why we have all these rhyming compounds in English, I guess.
Yes, and like the history of it, where does it come from, and what parts of the country use it.
Let’s focus on helter-skelter, shall we?
Yeah.
Okay, because we don’t want to do this higgledy-piggledy.
Helter-skelter is just standard English. There’s no regionality to it whatsoever.
Dates to around the 1500s, late 1500s. Origin, mostly unknown.
There’s one dictionary that has a theory that perhaps it’s from a Middle English word that means to hasten or to hurry. But we don’t have any evidence of that.
These double expressions, though, are really worth looking into, these rhyming expressions.
Sometimes they’re called rhyming jingles or reduplicatives or rhyming reduplicatives or flip-flop words or echo words.
We’ll just call them reduplicatives because that’s the most boring one on the list.
But there are three kinds of these in English, and this one falls into the third kind.
The first kind is the one where both syllables rhyme. So choo-choo, right? Exactly the same in both syllables.
Or doo-doo. They’re exactly the same.
The second kind is where there’s something called an ablaut, A-B-L-A-U-T. This is where the vowel change.
So clit-clop or chit-chat or wishy-washy. They’re exactly the same, except the second vowel is different.
The helter-skelter kind is the third kind. This is where there’s a rhyme, but the initial sound is different.
So besides helter-skelter, there’s things like super-duper, which is one of my favorites, lovey-dovey or hurly-burly, and there’s a ton of these.
I have a list somewhere of hundreds of these.
Well, yeah, one of my favorites is Boris Norris.
What’s that?
I don’t know that one.
Yeah, you can find it in 19th century dialect dictionaries. It means careless or reckless, sort of like helter-skelter, and it may come from Anglo-Saxon terms that mean without safety or security.
Boris Norris.
So, Jarrell, the key is in the helter-skelter category, if we can call it, and the third category is you can’t read too much into any part of it because typically it’s a nonsense phrase at this point.
It has a meaning, but it can’t easily be broken down etymologically.
That second rhyming part often is just fabricated for the rhyme.
Fabricated is that real basic kind of wordplay that people like to do in English and every other language.
We play with languages. That’s what English speakers do. That’s what all language speakers do.
So that’s the short version of it. That’s the very short version of why we do that.
And there’s a ton of these. If you want to Google rhyming reduplication, you’ll come up with many, many, many word lists on the Internet.
And in this instance, helter-skelter, he was using it in a way of like unmonitored, like we can’t let people in helter-skelter.
I’m guessing that means unmonitored. What do you guys think?
Typically, it just means in a haphazard way or in a disorganized way or even just hurriedly in a way that means you’re not being careful.
That’s not just fast, but fast and likely to make mistakes.
With wild abandon.
With wild abandon.
That’s a pretty good synonym.
Yeah.
But like all words, it’s completely context dependent. You always have to look at the company that a word is keeping to really truly know what it means.
A standing alone doesn’t tell you enough about it. You have to see its friends.
Oh, yes. Thank you guys so much for your help.
Our pleasure.
Sure thing.
Talk again sometime.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
So it’s not as if you look up the word helter in the dictionary that you’re going to find the word helter, right?
No, right, or namby-pamby or anything like that. You just, it’s idiomatic.
So you look it up as a phrase and don’t try to read too much into the individual parts of it.
Like willy-nilly. It’s not about Willie and it’s not about nilly. It’s about willy-nilly.
Yeah, it’s about willy-nilly.
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