It’s called reduplication. You find it in such words as zigzag and mishmash. It’s especially common in hyphenated words like chit-chat and teeter-totter. Here is a selection of such from the OED: bibble-babble drip-drop moon-man shiffle-shuffle tisty-tosty ...

... A law firm with a grasp on the business. I'd just like to know if this phase is grammatically correct. Thank you.

Here's a handy Venn diagram of geek/nerd/dork:

I write articles for different blogs. I was recently thinking of writing one on overweight people and how they are literally tortured by our society. What politically correct term should I use for fat / overweight / plumpy / oversized / obese. Further note: Yes, I know you'd oppose me by saying...

I said to a person that she is "chubby" and, apparently, she took it very seriously. What I meant to say is that she's not skin and bones... some more pounds than needed but, precisely because of that, she should be actually more attractive. In Italian I would say that she is "in carne" but I do...

I have a friend who is Finnish and lives in Finland. He wants to learn English but the problem is that he has no knowledge on English. He is totally uninitiated so it has become very difficult for him to start learning because almost all the tutorial sites are written in English what he, as of n...

This comes with a discussion with user Robusto that initially started from an inability to register a new account for the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange Blog. When trying to register for an account, the OpenID is not recognized, as shown in the following image: However, the login...