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airy-fairy (AIR-ee FAIR-ee) adjective
1. Light, delicate, fragile.
2. Fanciful, impractical, unrealistic.
[From Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1830 poem Lilian whose opening lines are:
"The slated Indian tour in Pakistan, one must remember, is not an
airy-fairy attempt to bridge the subcontinental divide."
"Rita is no airy-fairy artistic pipe-dreamer."
It's time for The Reduplicatives. That could be the name of a rock band - the one known for razzle-dazzle and their hoity-toity demeanor. They come in pairs, make a little chit-chat, and then hurry-scurry off to their next go-go gig.
Reduplicatives are words formed when a term is either repeated exactly (as in bonbon), or with a slight variation in the vowel (as in ping-pong), or consonant (as in higgledy-piggledy). This process of compound word formation is known as reduplication.
So let's not shilly-shally or be wishy-washy but look at the mish-mash of such super-duper terms, sometimes also called ricochet words, this week.
In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch-starved. -Diane Ackerman, writer (1948- )