Thursday, June 11, 2020

Rhyme Times

Recently A.Word.A.Day had a week of words that had some kind of repetition in the word.  I thought it was interesting, so I'm sharing.  


Artsy-fartsy, noun: pretentiously artistic or sophisticated.  


Flim-flam, noun: nonsense or deception; verb: to deceive or to swindle.


Hobnob, verb: to associate socially, especially with people of higher status. 


Lardy-dardy, adjective: pretentious, affected, dandyish. 


Razzle-dazzle, noun: noisy excitement, showy display or extravagant actions, especially when executed in an effort to distract or confuse. 


Can you think of any others?

7 comments:

Jeanie said...

Lazy daisy.

That's the only one that comes to mind but as soon as I hit publish I'll think of ten of them!

Queeniepatch said...

How about: easy-peasey, hanky-panky, boo-hoo, boogie-woogie, bees knees, eency-weency, hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo, roly-poly, snail-mail, walkie-talkie, tex-mex and wi-fi...
I think a lot of these expressions are used in children's nursery rhymes and songs, or in modern expressions, like snail-mail.
The formal term for these words is 'reduplication'.

Queeniepatch said...

PS. You can read more here:
https://www.poetry4kids.com/news/list-of-rhyming-phrases/

Janie said...

Super duper, later alligator, hot shot, that's off the top of my head.
They're kind of fun.

Vireya said...

I haven't come across lardy-dardy before, and I usually hear "art-farty" rather than the version with the s in it.

A few more: wishy-washy, walkie-talkie, super-duper, ping-pong, flip-flop, itsy-bitsy, picnic - once you start thinking of them there are heaps.

Does Japanese do this? Hindi does it a lot, and often there the second word starts with "v". So you get something like "chai-vai", where chai means tea, vai doesn't mean anything, but put them together and it means tea and snacks.

Julie said...

Lots of great suggestions from commenters

Leonore Winterer said...

What an interesting batch up words. I did not know 'hobnob' and the only other one I can thinkg of is flip-flop.