Do moo-moos eat grass-grass?

From the "there's a name for that too" file comes the phrase "contrastive reduplication".

Let's start with bog standard, garden variety reduplication, which you charmed your parents with as a child, you little monkey. Examples include choo-choo, yum-yum, and moo-moo. Pretty self explanatory, yes?

Contrastive reduplication is the adult version of this game. It's when you're inviting friends over for lunch and you say, "We'll make a tuna salad and you bring a salad salad."

In the words of a Boston University academic, contrastive reduplication is "a kind of clarifying construction that usually means something like 'the prototypical thing, not one of the slightly non-prototypical things one might otherwise have called by this name.' "

No? Then try this two-minute clip of comedian Micky Flanagan. It'll clear things up.

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