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I often times heard phrases like itty-bitty, nitty-gritty etc, the latter word followed part of the previous word's syllable(mostly ends with -y), I want to know the names for this kinds of phrases.

ZZcat
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  • Wishy-washy though the answer might seem, these sorts of sing-song sayings are frozen reduplicative phrases, and they often follow a very interesting pattern in lieu of rhyming. – tchrist Aug 12 '13 at 03:42
  • Other familiar examples of *rhyming reduplication* include: airy-fairy, cherry-merry, easy-peasy, flibberty-gibberty, fuddy-duddy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hanky-panky, higgledy-piggledy, highty-tighty, hoity-toity, hokey-pokey, hotsy-totsy, hurdy-gurdy, jelly-belly, lardy-dardy, lilly-pilly, lovey-dovey, namby-pamby, nilly-willy, party-hearty, Piggly-Wiggly, randy-dandy, teensy-weensy, willy-nilly, and wishy-washy. – tchrist Aug 12 '13 at 03:51
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    flibberty-gibberty, hotsy-totsy, lilly-pilly and party-hearty I have never heard of. Although I can guess the party-hearty meaning, "having a swell time", I'm at a loss for the previous ones. – Mari-Lou A Aug 12 '13 at 04:25
  • @Mari-LouA Very pre-war: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=flibberty-gibberty%2Chotsy-totsy%2Clilly-pilly&year_start=1870&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= – mplungjan Aug 12 '13 at 05:42
  • @tchrist: I don't know if you watch The Simpsons, but Ned Flanders is a master of rhyming reduplication. – J.R. Aug 12 '13 at 08:50

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