Grammar Girl here. I'm In Yon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today we're talking about a fun way to repeat words. And then, since National Puzzle Day is January 29th, we'll talk about words from the puzzling world.

Groundhog Day is February 2nd in the United States, and no, we aren't exactly such big fans of

groundhogs that we have a whole day to celebrate them. It's a strange tradition that you might argue

comes from people getting bored and

antsy as winter drags on, because we say that if a groundhog comes up and does not see its shadow,

it means winter is over. Yay! But if it does see its shadow, we're in for six more weeks of winter.

Now, the disappointment of the groundhog retreating to its burrow and leaving us with more winter on a bad year has led to Groundhog

Day also becoming a metaphor for repetition, which was famously immortalized in the Bill Murray

movie Groundhog Day, in which he repeats the same day, over and over.

So what does this have to do with the English language? Well, it made me think of a thing we do

where we repeat words that's formally called contrastive focus reduplication. It's the doubling of

words to show that something is real or the original

version of something. You might call a lettuce salad, a salad salad, to distinguish it from a

jello salad, for example. I think the first time I heard this kind of reduplication was in a

2015 ad for an IKEA catalog that still cracks me up every time I think

about it. The announcer describes the print catalog as a book book. They say, introducing the

2015 IKEA catalog, it's not a digital book or an e-book, it's a book book. The first thing to note is no cables,

not even a power cable. The 2015 IKEA catalog comes fully charged and the battery life is

eternal. Above a background of soaring music as though they're describing a cutting-edge product,

he goes on to talk about tactile technology, turning the page with your finger, and how the

content comes pre-installed.

It's fabulous.

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