Lyrics for Singable Patter-Satire: Tom Lehrer sings "REDUPLICATIONS A to K"

PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL SONG: "The Elements", Tom Lehrer, 1959.

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, 2015. This song is the seventh of nine in the series on Word- Pairs. You can find the links to the lyrics of the previous songs at the bottom of the post. 

EXPLANATION:  For a  discussion of reduplications, check an earlier post on this blog-site by clicking here. This post also honours our previous venture of Feb 15, 2017 entitled 'Abracadabra' to 'Zoom-zoom': possibly the world's largest compendium of reduplications'. 

UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog  "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE" with chord-charts and helpful performing suggestions. Click here to proceed to this site. But note that as it is a 'private blog' you will need to arrange access, if you don't already have it. Leave a comment on this post if you want to access the musically informative version. 

This post is a follow-up to "The Reduplications: A Lesson"

  This collection of fascinating phrases has been modified somewhat since its original posting on the site AmIRight.com. Thanks are due to Al Silver, Becky Hurwitz and Uncle Paul for suggesting several examples which were incorporated into the current version. 

 WARNING!  Do not attempt to sing this lesson at the pace of a patter-song. The management of this blog will take no responsibility for any injuries sustained.

Many of these words have fascinating stories of their origin and subsequent use; the hotlinks highlight those with instructive or amusing information available on the web.

A mini-lesson found on the Internet

There’s achy-breaky, artsy-fartsy, bigwig, BB, and aye-aye

Abracadabra, bric-a-brac, and boulder holder, and bye-bye

And Bora Bora, beriberi, (good) bees knees, and (bad) boo-boo

And bonbon, buddy-buddy, bunga-bunga, can-can, and choo-choo

There's crackerjack, couscous, and chili, chugalug, chin-chin, cocoa 

And clap-trap, culture vulture,  chit-chat, chock-a-block,  cluck-cluck, dodo 

And dilly-dally, deadhead, dum(b)-dum(b), dingle-dangle, and clip-clop 

And easy-peasy, even Steven, fifty-fifty, and flip-flop.

There's flim-flam, fiddle-faddle, fuddy-duddy, fat cat, funny mon-

-ey; Folderol and fender bender, flower power, honey-bun.

And four-door, ga-ga, goody-goody, golden-oldy, and hotshot

And go-go, gibber-jabber, hurly-burly, honky-tonk, hotspot. 

                       

There’s hocus-pocus, harum-scarum, holus-bolus, hoi-polloi

And holy moly!  hoity-toity, hip-hop, heeby-jeebies, oy!

And hullaballoo and hokey-pokey, hotpot, hoodoo, and hobo

And handy-dandy, hari-kari, Henny-Penny and heigh-ho!

Hell’s bells! there’s hanky-panky, hootchie-kootchie, hobnob and hoo-haw

Hush-hush! knock-knock, NewYork NewYork, (its zip is fixed twixt MA and PA)

Ill will, and itsy-bitsy, heyday, juju, bass-ackward blackjack

And jingle-jangle, jeepers-creepers, kow-tow, kiwi, and knick-knack. 

Ta-Dah !!!

HOT LINKS to WORD-PAIR PARODY LYRICS,

here on the wordplay-poetry-lyrics blog "Edifying Nonsense" ...

Pairs

Binomials (didactic discussion)

Alliterative Binomials, part #1 

Alliterative Binomials, part #2

Rhyming Binomials, A to L

Rhyming Binomials, M to Z

Reduplications - Lesson

Reduplications - Lexicon A to K

Reduplications - Lexicon L to Z

Legal Doublets .

DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 

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For Every Adventuality: VERSES for the FESTIVE SEASON

 

If you want to resume daily titillations on our blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any week in the years 2020 and 2021. (There are now over 600 daily entries on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.)

Immersible Bird-Verse: WATERFOWL #5

WORDPLAY POST 

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym), 2019/2020, a continuation of prior blogposts about waterfowl. 

  Readers who enjoy poetry describing the natural world around them with illustrative images and informative text, might also enjoy these blog-offerings, each a collage of verses on a wider topic...

Verses about Geysers, Sep '18
Verses about Frogs, Jan '19
Verses about Trees, Apr '19
Verses about Reptiles, Jun '19
Verses about Waterfowl, June '19
Verses about Waterfowl (part #2), July '19
Verses about Trees (part #2), Aug '19

Verses about Insects, Sep '19

Verses about Waterfowl (part #3), Apr '20

Verses about Reptiles, (part #2), May '20

Verses (brief sagas) about Waterfowl (part #4 - Loons, Cormorants), Aug '20.

DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 

To resume daily titillations on our blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 to the present. (As of September 2022, there are 1000 entries available on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.) For birdlovers, one of the advantages of the Daily blog is that it includes our ad hoc postings of brief videos of waterfowl flying and swimming, even parading about on land. 

Reversing Verse: Limericks About CLASSIC PALINDROMES, part #1

WORDPLAY post, Dec 5, 2020. 

SATIRE COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) and Dr. G.H. have prioritized wordplay on this blog since its inception in 2016. The concept of 'goofy' variants on classical palindromes was honored as the topic of three blog-postings that you can link to here. A to H post#20 ; I to O post#29 ; P to Z post #40. Indeed, the goofy variants are often the key to teasing rhymes from this otherwise inflexible form of wordplay.
  Today's verses have also been published at OEDILF.com
(Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form), an online humor dictionary that has accumulated over 110,000 laboriously edited limericks, including over 450 that we have submitted. The OEDILFian code number for the verse and its status ('T' = 'temporary', not yet finally approved), is indicated below each of our slides. 

Incidentally, artwork, including photos, as well as poetry, are the creation of this blog's author-editors (i.e. G and G) unless otherwise indicated.  The original 'inventors' of the classic palindromes have generally not been reported, and are best regarded as having been lost in the sands of time.
                                                           

                    

T. Eliot's toilet

A Santa at NASA

CONTENTS

Please note that beyond this point in the presentation, there will be an exclusive correlation between green italicized font and palindromes (phrases or sentences whose letters are ordered identically when they are read backwards as well as forwards)

1. Dennis sinned

2. Drawn onward
3. Gnu dung

4. Yreka bakery

5. Lonely Tylenol

6. UFO tofu

7. Too hot to hoot

8. Never odd or even 

Authors' Note: 

patsy: slang for 'sucker' or 'gullible person'

Dem: American short-form for 'Democrats', referring either generally to adherents of the political party, or to elected officials

Don: short-form for 'Donald'; a respectful term of address for a Spanish or Italian nobleman; a leader of the Italian Cosa Nostra

D.C.: District of Columbia, often used in casual references to the American capital city, Washington

   This poem was written just after the publically broadcast hearings of the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in the first impeachment of Donald Trump in November, 2019.

   Are we not drawn onward to new era? also represents a classic palindrome.

 Click here to learn more about Yreka CA.

Authors' Note: The phrase UFO tofu is often mentioned as a 'classic palindrome'. To which, the author rejoins, "Not UFO: futon". 

Authors' Note:

Sir; a plan, if final — Paris.

  In December 2015, the United States, under President Barack Obama, became a part of the Paris Accord, an international convention to mitigate the effects of climate change by curtailing production of greenhouse gases.

  In June 2017, President Donald Trump, whose personal business depended in large part on the construction and operation of golf-resorts, proceeded to withdraw from the treaty.

  Immediately after his inauguration in January 2021, President Joe Biden took measures to rejoin the accord.

Stay tuned for further posts that will bring you poetic interpretation of more classic palindromes:

Scheduled for January 5, 2021 ... 

9. Sex at noon taxes

10. No 'X' in Nixon

11. A Santa at NASA

12. T. Eliot's toilet

13. Madam, I'm Adam

14. Sex of foxes

15. Able ere Elba

16. A Toyota's a Toyota

Scheduled for February 5, 2021 ...

17. Mr. Owl ate my metal worm

18. Emil's lime

19. Critique of palindromes; 'To idiot:' 

20. A dim or fond 'No!' from Ida

21. No lemon, no melon (fruitless)

22. Contrived (saw- and see-lines)

23. Flee to me, remote elf

24. No sir, prison (Roger Stone)

Scheduled for March 10, 2021 ...

25. Zeus sees Suez (canals)

26. Step on no pets  

27. Do geese see God?  

28. No 'D'; No 'L' -- London (negation)

29. Dogma? I am God

30. Mix a maxim

31. Egad! no bondage

32. Go hang a salami..... 

33. Racecar

34. A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama

CLICK ON THESE HOTLINKS For some SINGABLE PALINDROMES

Gnats Stang: Gnus Sung

X66X

Palindromes of Evil
Sin and Redemption
Leigh's Palindrome Workshop

DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 

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Edifying Lyrics: "A LESSON ABOUT REDUPLICATIONS"

POETRY / PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL POEM and SONG: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, 2015, updated  2017.

...

... in a fallout shelter?

EXPLANATION: This poem, consisting of a lesson on types of reduplication, evolved as a musical parody using the template of "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer. Further exploration of this type of wordplay also progressed into the venture of 

Feb 15, 2017 entitled 'Abracadabra' to 'Zoom-zoom': possibly the world's largest compendium of reduplications.

   Eventually, this poem was set to music, using the framework of Lehrer's patter-song framework, and became an intrinsic part of a series of nine songs devoted to musical Word-Pairs. This posting of The Lesson, and subsequent posting of a Lexicon of Reduplications contains a total of almost 300 examples of this fascinating and amusing linguistic form.

 UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog  "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE", along with chord-charts and helpful performing suggestions; click here to proceed to this site.  

 

1) Introduction

I’m so enthralled with lyrics – their inherent musicality;

I love the words I’ve heard, for both their quantity and quality.

And so I’ll share with you this recent lexic revelation –

My favorite word-device goes by the name ‘reduplication’.

This humble term is used for killer-diller innovations,
Some recent lulus – chick flick, boy-toy – marvellous creations. 

For others, spoke with reverence, their birth can date back centuries

Like hully-gully, boogie-woogie, riff-raff, and hurdy-gurdy.

These fuzzy-wuzzy friends are formed by vocal repetition,

With wi-fi you might find them in Wiki’s current edition;

The three important sub-types you will wiki-wiki* learn about

Are known as Rhyming, Exact, and the oddly German-named Ablaut *.

2) Rhyming Reduplicates

Hear hear! some fine examples start with “H”, like helter-skelter, see!

Hodge-podge, humdrum, hubbub, hillbilly, and higgledy-piggledy.

Although the showing’s not so glowing for some, like the letter “D”

Just ding-aling and Double-Bubble, and surname of H.-Dumpty.

3) Exact Reduplicates

As toddlers we knew quite precisely what pee-pee and yum-yum meant

They’re constituted by exact repeating of each element.

Extension into adult life – tsk-tsk!  it doesn’t matter

For mahi-mahi, rah-rah! hubba-hubba, night-night, yada-yada.

4) Ablaut Reduplicates

Linguistic term that might put off, but don’t throw in the towel

To form the second part you merely change a single vowel.

Criss-cross, splish-splash, King Kong, mish-mash provide the explanation;

Though tidbit, boob-tube, whipper-snapper show some variation.

5)  Borrowings from Other Languages
Some foreign words sound quite absurd, and might be greeted with yuk-yuks,
Like chi-chi, tutu, tête-à-tête, and tse-tse, muu-muu and mukluks. 

6) 'Shm-Reduplicates'
And many word-shmords are employed by speaker-shmeakers of Yiddish,
Like fancy-shmancy, choosy-shmoozy, horseradish(mmh!), gefilte-fish.

7) Related Forms e.g. collocation

Dream Teams of paired words get primetime - in rhyming collocation;

These catchy terms, like kitty-cat, aren’t true reduplications. 
Tut-tut! for many wild-child words, there's no accord on how they're grouped,
Like fuddle-duddle, Walla Walla, voodoo, wiseguys, hula-hoop.

8) Conclusion

The lesson's sung, my cha-cha's done, we’ve reached our termination.

(Boo-hoo!) True blue, and through and through we’ve viewed reduplication;

But while we bid our fond ta-tas, I leave this final message – “HI!”

These phrases love to start with “H”, and their initial vowel – “I”.

Ta-Dah !!!

* German= "off-sound", word coined in the 16th century to indicate a systematic change in the vowel of a word-root to convey a difference in meaning; rhymes with shout

* Hawaiian for quickly or  bus !!

9) Add-On: A Singable Lexicon of Reduplicates
See subsequent posts.

HOT LINKS to WORD-PAIR PARODY LYRICS,

here on the wordplay-poetry-lyrics blog "Edifying Nonsense" ...

Pairs

Binomials (didactic discussion)

Alliterative Binomials, part #1 

Alliterative Binomials, part #2

Rhyming Binomials, A to L

Rhyming Binomials, M to Z

Reduplications - Lesson

Reduplications - Lexicon A to K

Reduplications - Lexicon L to Z

Legal Doublets .

DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 

To resume daily titillations on our blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 to the present. (As of September 2022, there are 1000 entries available on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.)