Grammar Girl here. This week, Gretchen McCulloch has written a fun piece about nonsense syllables such as the ones in this song.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la la la la.

Here are some other songs.

Na na na na, na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.

Why do the guest-writers always make me sing?

What battle-oop-up-a-wamp-bam-boom.

Hickory-dickory-dock.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the podcast we go.

So what do all of these songs have in common?

Well, they're all examples of musical nonsense syllables.

The technical term for which is non-lexical vocables.

Non-lexical because they don't have any sort of meaning that you could find in a dictionary

or lexicon and vocables because they're things you vocalize.

Lexical vocables, on the other hand, are more commonly known as words.

Although sometimes people call the non-lexical type just vocables.

It's tempting to ask where non-lexical vocables come from.

Right, I know you've sat around with your friend saying,

where do non-lexical vocables come from?

But unfortunately, that's probably about the same as asking where language or music comes from.

In fact, like children who babble, mom, mom, mom, mom, as they're learning to speak,

it's quite likely that we made meaningless rhythmic sounds before we even had specific meanings associated with them,

although, of course, we can't know for sure.

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