Reduplicative compound

A reduplicative compound, also known as a "ricochet word" or "vocal gesture", is a paired word that differs either only in a vowel (tick-tock) or a consonant (lovey-dovey). They are often, but not always, hyphenated.

They can be used as compound nouns, compound verbs and/or compound adjectives, as adverbs or as exclamations (Jeepers creepers!):

Compound nouns

 * argle-bargle; argy-bargy; fuddy-duddy; heebie-jeebies; hokey-cokey; hokey-pokey; hubble-bubble; hurly-burly; jim-jams; mish-mash; nitty-gritty; pell-mell; pitter-patter; see-saw; shilly-shally; tick-tock; tittle-tattle; yummy mummy;

Compound adjectives

 * helter-skelter; higgledy-piggledy; hoity-toity; hotsy-totsy; itsy-bitsy; lovey-dovey; okey-dokey; teenie-weenie; wishy-washy;