DUPLICATION IN VOCABULARY

 

Remember "walkie-talkies"? This gadget was used to "chit-chat" with distant friends prior to the cell phone. Far from being "teeny-weeny", they were bulky and cumbersome and became part of the "nick-knacks" we had and which, somehow, made us feel "goody-goody" in the "hurly-burly" of our daily lives. "Okey-dokey", let me tell you now that I still feel in "tip-top" shape, although some of my contemporaries seem to be somewhat "ga-ga" and they believe the "mumbo-jumbo" TV dishes out to the "riff-raff." Of course, I do know there´s a lot of "hocus-pocus" and "hanky-panky" going on in the media, often as apocryphal (fake) news. 

The duplication of sounds to make new words is a characteristic of English we accept "willy-nilly" without giving it much thought. And these duplications have been around for centuries. Some of the resulting words may be hyphenated, others not.