It's hard to believe it's nearly a decade since I posted about adjective order in the insane world of English language. Definitely time for another snippet of something that has no immediately obvious good reason behind it, but just sounds right.
Yup, I'm talking about Ablaut reduplication. (Thank you Merriam-Webster's recent Facebook page.)
English words have vowels. If you have a string of three words, you put them in an order where the vowels are
I - A - O.
If there are only two words, the order of vowel is either
I - A
or
I -O.
Some examples, you ask? Merriam-Webster and the internet are happy to oblige:
tic-tac-toe, Big Bad Wolf, Live Laugh Love, splish splash splosh
click-clack, riff-raff, zig-zag, chit-chat, mish-mash, pitter-patter
King Kong, hip-hop, flip-flop, TikTok, ping pong, ding dong
Go on - swap the order round and hear just how wrong they sound! Dear English, you are bonkers, but we love you anyway.
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