Last month I promised to continue our investigation of reduplication (argy-bargy, helter-skelter, zig-zag, etc.), and the subject seems particularly appropriate as I write.

A footballer called Kaka has been in the news for being offered £100m to transfer to Manchester City. He got his peculiar nickname from his younger brother who, when young, couldn't pronounce his real name. Kaka was the nearest he could get to Ricardo.

This is another example of reduplication (like alliteration and rhyme) appealing to children, which is why they use simple examples like mama and gee-gee.

But reduplication also intrigues adults, which may explain such everyday formations as backpack, blackjack, dodo, downtown, grandstand, hobo, hoodoo, hotpot, housey-housey, night light, May Day, picnic, pompom, singsong, titbit, tutu and zigzag.

And we give reduplicated nicknames to such people as President Nixon (Tricky Dicky) and the US general Norman Schwarzkopf (Stormin’ Norman). Characters in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood include Mr and Mrs Willy Nilly and an organist called Organ Morgan. If you were watching television in the 1950s, you may remember Raymond Bessone, a hairdresser who acquired the nickname of Mr Teasy-Weasy, possibly from his habit of backcombing women’s hair.

People also use reduplication when they want to emphasise something, as when we say something is a no-no or somewhere is a no-go area. In 1954, Winston Churchill famously said “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

This desire for emphasis is also noticeable in the naming of commercial products: Coca-Cola, Curly-Wurly, Kit-Kat, Potty Putty, Tic-Tac, Utterly Butterly, etc.

Reduplication is often used when we want to belittle or make fun of something — which may be airy-fairy, artsy-fartsy, fuddy-duddy,hoity-toity, humdrum, namby-pamby, niminy-piminy or a mishmash. The Oxford English Dictionary includes hoddy-doddy and hodmandod meaning “short and clumsy”.

People may be accused of being stupid or talking nonsense (often deliberately misleading) as in claptrap, flim-flam, hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, hugger-mugger, mumbo-jumbo, nitwit and tittle-tattle. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Malvolio is told to “leave thy vain bibble-babble,” and in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Sir Hugh Evans suggests “It were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles.”

On the other hand, reduplication can suggest approval — when we say that something is super-duper, tip-top or the bee’s knees.

Reduplicated words and phrases can describe a new phenomenon or a fashionable trend, so that such combinations reflect our changing social history.

Here is a list of dates when (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) certain reduplications entered the language: 1943 Hokey Cokey 1949 Legal eagle 1950 Hi-fi, Mau Mau, sin bin 1953 Gang-bang 1955 Sci-fi (science fiction), space race 1958 Skid lid (crash helmet) 1963 Brain drain 1964 Moptop (shaggy Beatles hairstyle) 1965 Go-go girl 1967 Flower power 1969 Ro-ro (roll-on, roll-off ferry, etc.) 1976 Fun run 1981 Toy-boy 1982 Hip-hop, snail mail 1983 Wacky baccy (marijuana) 1986 Des res, shock jock 1990 Happy-clappy 1999 Bling-bling The OED says that the first use of pooper-scooper occurred in 1956, when an American applied to patent the Super Dooper Pooper Scooper. In 1968 America, supporters of Ralph Nader’s campaigns on consumer issues were nicknamed Nader’s Raiders.

English is not the only language that employs reduplication. In fact we use quite a lot of reduplicated words borrowed from other languages, like beri-beri (from the Sinhala language, in which it is a reduplicated form of beri, meaning weakness). Other borrowed terms include agar-agar, couscous, hula-hula, ju-ju, tutti frutti, voodoo and yoyo.

Chop-chop! (meaning ‘Hurry up!’) is one of several Pidgin-English words. This one comes from Chinese, as does kow-tow — which means to bow or submit, from two Chinese words meaning “knock your head”.

One particularly interesting phrase is bric-à-brac, which is clearly borrowed from French, although the French expression probably comes from de bric et de broc, which means “by hook or by crook”.

Bric-à-brac is a synonym for another reduplicated term: knick-knacks.

Bric-à-brac is one of a number of reduplicated phrases with other words intervening between the reduplicated items. These are quite numerous, including chock-a-block, dribs and drabs, meals on wheels, odds and sods, tit for tat, and even soap-on-a-rope. Dennis the Menace is a well-known character in comics, while Cox and Box was the title of Arthur Sullivan's earliest performed comic opera, adapted from a farce called Box and Cox.

Let’s close with an Oxford connection. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a craze among University students for adding ‘er’ or ‘ers’ at the end of words. This not only gave us such slang words as footer and Cuppers, but it led to the Prince of Wales being known as the Pragger-Wagger and a wastepaper basket being called a wagger-pagger-bagger.

Tony Augarde is the author of The Oxford Guide to Word Games (OUP, £14.99) and The Oxford A to Z of Word Games (OUP, £4.99)