teeter-totter

The outdoor toy usually called a seesaw has a number of regional names, New England having the greatest variety in the smallest area. In southeast New England it is called a tilt or a tilting board. Speakers in northeast Massachusetts call it a teedle board; in the Narragansett Bay area the term changes to dandle or dandle board. Teeter or teeterboard is used more generally in the northeast United States, while teeter-totter, probably the most common term after seesaw, is used across the inland northern states and westward to the West Coast. Both seesaw (from the verb saw) and teeter-totter (from teeter, as in to teeter on the edge) demonstrate the linguistic process called reduplication, where a word or syllable is doubled, often with a different vowel. Reduplication is typical of words that indicate repeated activity, such as riding up and down on a seesaw.