Meanings
- not comparableFormed by redoubling; reduplicate, double
A hyphen (-) is generally used to indicate the boundary between the components of ordinary and reduplicative compounds in derivational morphology.
2004, Jean Robert Opgenort, A Grammar of Wambule1 more example
The loss of the reduplicative syllable in the perfect is sufficiently accounted for by the same occurrence in almost all the modern, and even some of the ancient branches of the Indo-Germanic family.
1848, Chevalier Bunsen, Charles Meyer, Max Müller, Three Linguistic Dissertations
plural reduplicatives
- grammarA word obtained by the process of reduplication.
Grammatically, Malay uses reduplication for plurals (burung = bird, burung-burung = birds) and thus repeated words are commonly heard in Malay speech; in contrast, in English reduplicatives are much less frequent and often involve phoneme modulation (ding-dong; wham-bam).
2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 10
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
Cite this entry
reduplicative. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reduplicative
“reduplicative.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reduplicative. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “reduplicative,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/reduplicative.
Source: reduplicative on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.