1051. This week, we look at doubled words, like "salad-salad" or "job-job," and what the repetition is actually telling us. Then, in honor of National Puzzle Day, we look at the history of jigsaw puzzles and some fun words from the industry such as "whimsy" and "puzzband."
1051. This week, we look at doubled words, like "salad-salad" or "job-job," and what the repetition is actually telling us. Then, in honor of National Puzzle Day, we look at the history of jigsaw puzzles and some fun words from the industry such as "whimsy" and "puzzband."
The "puzzle" segment is by Karen Lunde, a former Quick & Dirty Tips editor and digital pioneer who's been spinning words into gold since before cat videos ruled the internet. She created one of the first online writing workshops, and she's published thousands of articles on the art of writing. These days, she leads personal narrative writing retreats and helps writers find their voice. Visit her at ChanterelleStoryStudio.com.
🔗 Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.
🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.
🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.
đź”—Â Take our advertising survey.Â
🔗 Get the edited transcript.
đź”—Â Get Grammar Girl books.Â
đź”—Â Join Grammarpalooza. Get ad-free and bonus episodes at Apple Podcasts or Subtext. Learn more about the difference.Â
| HOST: Mignon Fogarty
| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).
| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.
| Grammar Girl Social MediaÂ
| Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon. Bluesky.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're talking about a fun way to repeat words, and then since National Puzzle Day is January 29, we'll talk about words from the puzzling world.Â
by Mignon Fogarty
Groundhog Day is February 2 in the United States, and, no, we aren't exactly such big fans of groundhogs that we have a whole day to celebrate them. It's a strange tradition that you might argue comes from people getting bored and antsy as winter drags on because we say that if a groundhog comes up and does not see its shadow, it means winter is over. Yay! But if it does see its shadow, we're in for six more weeks of winter.
The disappointment of the groundhog retreating to its burrow and leaving us with more winter on a bad year has led to Groundhog Day also becoming a metaphor for repetition, which was famously immortalized in the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day" in which he repeats the same day over and over.
So what does this have to do with the English language? Well, it made me think of a thing we do where we repeat words that's formally called "contrastive focus reduplication." It’s the doubling of words to show that something is real or the original version of something. You might call a lettuce salad a "salad-salad" to distinguish it from a Jello salad, for example.
I think the first time I heard this kind of reduplication was in a 2015 ad for an Ikea catalog that still cracks me up every time I think about it. The announcer describes the print catalog as a “book-book.” They say,
Introducing the 2015 Ikea catalog, it’s not a digital book or an ebook, it’s a book-book. The first thing to note is no cables. Not even a power cable. The 2015 Ikea catalog comes fully charged, and the battery life is eternal.Â
Above a background of soaring music, as though they're describing a cutting edge product, he goes on to talk about tactile technology—turning the page with your finger—and how the content comes preinstalled. It's fabulous.
This "book-book" type of repetition isn't that rare in English. We might talk about "milk-milk" to distinguish cow's milk from almond milk or soy milk, and college students can say they are going "home-home" to describe going to their parent's house instead of just back to their dorm.Â
Now, reduplication is just a fancy way of saying something is repeated, whether it’s a whole word (like when we say “night night” to little children or call a train a “choo-choo”), or whether it’s just part of word sounds (like when you say you’re working with a “hodge-podge” of ingredients, eating a Kit-Kat, or saying you should stop “dilly-dallying” and get to work).
But contrastive focus reduplication is a special form of reduplication. It uses duplication to convey a sense of realness, or authenticity, or seriousness, or intensity — often, it implies the default case. Books were printed before they were digital, so you intuitively know that a “book-book” is a print book. And to use an example from the “Zits” comic strip highlighted on the Language Log site, the teenage boy, Jeremy, is still in bed and tells his mom checking in on him that “He’s, he's up. He’s just not up-up.” In that case, “up-up” is a more intense or real form of being up than just yelling from bed, “OK, I’m up.”
So it’s not new. In fact, there’s a well-known linguistics paper from 2004 called “Contrastive Focus Reduplication in English (The Salad-Salad Paper).” It includes references that go back decades, and talks about how this kind of reduplication is widespread. Old people do it. Young people do it. British people do it. Americans do it. People who speak Italian, Spanish, Russian, and other languages do it; and even native speakers of other languages do it when they’re speaking English. It is more common in speech than in writing though.Â
Another interesting thing is that the paper’s authors describe the phenomenon as “contagious,” writing:
“Even those who claim never to use the construction are sensitive to its contagious quality, once exposed. We have repeatedly caused an outbreak of [contrastive focus reduplication] following presentations of parts of this work.”Â
The “focus” part of the name comes from the idea that the duplication focuses your attention on words of the same type or class. For example, if I say, “I’m not bringing a salad,” you could think that I’m bringing something that is completely not in the salad category — meat or dessert — but if I say “I’m not bringing a salad-salad,” you know that I’m still bringing something in the salad family. I’ve focused you on the salads. We call all kinds of things “salad” — chicken salad, macaroni salad, tuna salad, the previously mentioned Jello salad, and so on — and I could be bringing any of those, but you now know you’ll need someone else to bring the green salad, which most people would view as the prototypical salad. Duplicating the word focuses us on things that are considered salads. Â
And if your cousin has been interning and then volunteering and maybe working part time, and your aunt says he got a new job, your judgmental grandmother might ask, “But is it a job-job?” implying that she hopes it was a serious job this time, like the kind of “9-to-5 go into an office” job that she considers the standard, and by saying it that way, she’s also acknowledging that there are other things, like internships and volunteering, that still fall in the broader “job” category.
And you can do this with lots of other parts of speech too, not just nouns. For example, if your younger sister says she likes a boy in her class, and you want to know if it’s the romantic kind of liking, you could double the verb and ask, “But do you like-like him? Or just like him?”Â
You can even do it with phrases. Kevin Russell, one of the authors of the “Salad-Salad” paper keeps a corpus of examples, mostly from pop culture, and in one from the TV show “The Goldbergs,” the son is telling the father about a problem he has with a girl, and the father says, “Tell me about it,” so the son starts adding details, and the father says, “I didn’t mean tell-me-about-it-tell-me-about-it. I meant I screwed up with a girl too.”
And in case you’re wondering how to write these double words, most linguists seem to use a hyphen between them (“I’ll bring a salad-salad,” with a hyphen between the two words).
So if you hear someone doubling words like this, now you know what to call it, and if you’re writing dialogue in fiction and want to reflect how people actually talk, don’t be afraid to occasionally use contrastive focus reduplication. I mean, I know you’d never be afraid-afraid, but you shouldn’t worry. It’ll sound natural.
And getting back to Groundhog Day, it's a fun little holiday, but it's not a holiday-holiday in that nobody gets the day off work. In fact, we put a groundhog to work. Let's hope it doesn't see its shadow.
by Karen Lunde
If you're one of the millions who love to spend a cozy evening piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, what do you call yourself? A puzzle solver? A puzzle enthusiast?Â
Well, here's a fun word to add to your lexicon, although you won't find it in standard dictionaries. Some devoted puzzle fans have coined the term "dissectologist."
And it turns out, "dissectologists" have a day of their own to celebrate their passion for puzzles. National Puzzle Day is January 29th — right in the heart of winter, when many of us are curled up indoors hunting for that elusive piece with the tiny bit of blue sky on it.
So, let's talk about the language we use to talk about jigsaw puzzles. And as a bonus, as we do, you'll see how the term "dissectologist" gained favor with true puzzle lovers.
Back in the 1760s, a London mapmaker named John Spillsbury created what we now consider the first jigsaw puzzle. He mounted a map on wood and cut around the borders of each country, calling his creation a dissected map. Â
And the term "dissected" wasn't just clever marketing. These early puzzles were serious educational tools, used to teach geography much like medical students used dissected specimens to learn anatomy. The connection between puzzles and dissection stuck around in puzzle enthusiast circles, which explains why some modern puzzle lovers playfully call themselves "dissectologists."
The name "jigsaw puzzle" arrived in the early 1900s when puzzle makers started using a new tool: the jigsaw. The jigsaw, invented in the late 1800s, had a blade that moved up and down — vertically — which meant it could cut intricate patterns quickly. The "dissected map" puzzles tended to be either luxury or educational items. The introduction of the jigsaw made it easier to produce them, which in turn made them more affordable and kickstarted their evolution from educational tool to relaxing pastime.
Although jigsaws are still a common power tool today, only handcrafters still use them to make puzzles. These days, most puzzles are mass-produced in factories where printed paper is glued onto sturdy cardboard backing and then die-cut to form the puzzle pieces.Â
Even so, the term "jigsaw puzzle" stuck. Which makes sense, when you think about it. "Mass-produced cardboard puzzle" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
So, are there more fun terms related to jigsaw puzzles? As it turns out, there are!
As puzzles evolved from educational tools to entertainment, Victorian era craftsmen started adding special touches to make their creations more distinctive and delightful. One of these innovations gave us another charming piece of puzzle vocabulary: "whimsies."
"Whimsies" are puzzle pieces cut into recognizable shapes — like animals, letters, or objects. Found primarily in wooden puzzles, these specially shaped pieces were purely decorative, cut according to the puzzle maker's whim. While mass-produced cardboard puzzles largely did away with whimsies, you can still find them as high-end wooden puzzles today.
Today's puzzlers have developed an even richer vocabulary to describe their hobby.Â
Just as fun are the broader terms we use around puzzle assembly. We talk about "sorting" pieces, working in "sections," and finding pieces that "connect" or "link." When we can't find a piece, we say we're "hunting" for it. And that satisfying moment when pieces fit together? That's when they "click" or "snap" into place.
And here's a funny bonus term among puzzle aficionados: "Puzzband!" That would be the husband of a puzzle enthusiast, of course. And there's also the gender-neutral term "puzzle partner." But it's worth mentioning that these are just-for-fun terms that aren't widely used.Â
The evolution of puzzle language mirrors the evolution of jigsaw puzzles themselves — from an educational tool to a popular form of entertainment to a serious hobby. Next time you're "hunting" for that elusive piece or admiring a "whimsy" in a wooden puzzle, you'll be participating in a tradition with its own rich vocabulary. And if someone asks if you're a dissectologist? You can proudly say yes — no degree required!
BIO: That segment was written by Karen Lunde, a former Quick & Dirty Tips editor and digital pioneer who's been spinning words into gold since before cat videos ruled the internet. She created one of the first online writing workshops, and she's published thousands of articles on the art of writing. These days, she leads personal narrative writing retreats and helps writers find their voice. Visit her at ChanterelleStoryStudio.com.Â
And finally, I have a familect story from Paul.
My wife and I classify all birds as chickens.
Sparrows are tiny chickens.
Rens and tits are teeny tiny chickens and wood pigeons are chubby chickens.
But best of all are the penguins.
We call penguins chilly chickens.
Thank so much, Paul. As long-time listeners know, I'm a big fan of penguins, or as you would call them, chilly chickens. That made me laugh.Â
If you want to share the story of a word you use with your family or friends that's just an insider thing nobody else would know — your familect — you can send it to me through a voice chat on WhatsApp, or you can call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL, and both of those are in the show notes.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Davina Tomlin and Nat Hoopes in marketing; Holly Hutchings in digital operations; Dan Feierabend in audio; Morgan Christianson in advertising; and Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts, who has two cats named Sami and Boogie.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip-a-day book "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.