Rhyming Reduplications

  

Rhyming reduplications are words comprised of two parts (usually hyphenated) which rhyme.  

Classic examples are mish-mash, hodgepodge, helter-skelter, mumbo-jumbo, nitty-gritty, willy-nilly, helter-skelter, hocus-pocus, hanky-panky, higgledy-piggledy, rumpy-pumpy, topsy-turvy, shilly-shally, raggle-taggle, namby-pamby, fuddy-duddy and the more recent chick-flick. And, of course, who can forget Brian Hyland’s  “Itsy bitsy, teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini” of 1960? 

Occasionally the words are written separately but on their own are meaningless such as pell mell.

Mish-mash

A mish-mash is a confused mixture of things,; a hodgepodge; a jumbled conglomeration; 

The first known use of the word is to be found in the 15^th century.  It is thought to originate from Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix.

There is also a reference to a place called Michmash in Nehemiah 7:31 in the Hebrew Scriptures but how relevant that is I don’t know.

  

Conjugalism

 Conjugalism as a word no longer exists - it is obsolete.  But hopefully the act it portrays still lives.  Conjugalism is the art of making a good marriage. Magazines have been attempting to teach us the art of conjugalism since at least 1823 according to Ammon Shea in 'Reading the Oxford English Dictionary'. Indeed, I bet there were writings on the subject in ancient Greece.  How sad that the word has fallen out of use.

Phatic

  In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information. An example might be the use of 'Eh' at the end of a sentence - "What do think, eh?"

Geek

A geek is a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest.  It is most popularly used in the term ‘computer geek’.

Nowadays the word geek is a slang term originally used to describe odd or non-mainstream people, with different connotations ranging from "an expert or enthusiast" to "a person heavily interested in a hobby", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise socially inept person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual".

Although often considered as a pejorative, the term is also often used self-referentially without malice or as a source of pride. Its meaning has evolved to connote "someone who is interested in a subject (usually intellectual or complex) for its own sake."

But in the early 20^th Century a geek was a circus freak and geekery meant bizarre physical acts performed by geeks.  Amongst these were carnival performers, often billed as wild men, whose act usually included biting the head off a live chicken or snake.  Gross!

The meaning changed to its more expert / eccentric one after Robert Heinlein used the term geek to mean a maths freak in 1952.

Desiderium

   Desiderium is an archaic word meaning a yearning for something one once had but has no more. I not only have a desiderium for my lost youth but also for many of the books which have passed through my hands over the years and been sold on or given away.  If I won the lottery I would have a large house.  Not for show or because I want the space for myself but in order to display all my books and pictures. I would then satisfy many of my desideriums (or is it desideria) by buying them all again.

Miscegenation

 Miscegenation is a noun meaning the interbreeding of people of different racial types.

Croghton-Belly

Cat saw an article in The Old Foodie and said she thought of me.  At first I wondered if my spreading waist-line was the cause but then I realised it was the lovely word Croghton-Belly.

Unknown American artist, 1850’s-60’s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A Croghton-Belly is a person who eats a great deal of fruit. It comes from 'A dictionary of archaic & provincial words, obsolete phrases ...' (1852), by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps.  It is said to come from Lancashire.  If you would like to find out more please visit the Old Foodie's article about A belly Full of Fruit!

The pilcrow

The pilcrow (¶), also called the paragraph mark, paragraph sign, paraph, alinea, or blind P, is a typographical character for individual paragraphs.

The pilcrow can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one long piece of copy. The pilcrow was a type of rubrication used in the Middle Ages to mark a new train of thought, before the convention of visually discrete paragraphs was commonplace

The derivation of its name is as complex as its form. It originally comes from the Greek paragraphos(para, “beside” and graphein, “to write”), which led to the Old French paragraph, which evolved into pelagraphe and then pelagreffe. Somehow, the word transformed into the Middle English pylcrafte and eventually became the “pilcrow.”

Excerpt of a page from Villanova, Rudimenta Grammaticæ showing several pilcrow signs in the form common at that time, circa 1500 (image: Wikimedia commons).  

(Thanks to Mish for this word.)

Cicerone

 

Pronounced (I think) sis-er-oh-knee, a cicerone is a guide who gives information about antiquities and places of interest to sightseers.  The word is derived from the Italian for antiquarian scholar, guide, after Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Roman consul, orator, and writer, alluding to the eloquence and erudition of these guides.

(If you want to learn more about Cicero I thoroughly recommend Robert Harris’ ‘Imperium’ (2006), a life of Cicero.  The book is fiction but is brilliantly researched and gives a real flavour of what the great man must have been like.)

Thanks, Monica, for bringing this word to mind.