Seesaw - Name Origin and Variations

Name Origin and Variations

Seesaws go by several different names around the world. Seesaw, or its variant see-saw, is a direct Anglicisation of the French ci-ça, meaning literally, this-that, seemingly attributable to the back-and-forth motion for which a seesaw is known.

In most of the United States, a seesaw is also called a "teeter-totter". According to linguist Peter Trudgill, the term originates from the Norfolk language word tittermatorter. A "teeter-totter" may also refer to a two-person swing on a swing seat, on which two children sit facing each other and the teeter-totter swings back and forth in a pendulum motion.

Both teeter-totter (from teeter, as in to teeter on the edge) and seesaw (from the verb saw) 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.

In the southeastern New England region of the United States, it is sometimes referred to as a tilt or a tilting board.

Speakers in northeastern Massachusetts, United States, sometimes call them teedle boards. In the Narragansett Bay area the term changes to dandle or dandle board.

According to Michael Drout, "There are almost no "Teeter-" forms in Pennsylvania, and if you go to western West Virginia and down into western North Carolina there is a band of "Ridey-Horse" that heads almost straight south. This pattern suggests a New England origin or importation of the term that spread down the coast and a separate development in Appalachia, where Scotts-Irish settlers did not come from New England. "Hickey-horse" in the coastal regions of North Carolina is consistent with other linguistic and ethnic variations.

In Korea, one form of the seesaw is known as a Neol (널) and is used for Neolttwigi (널뛰기) by women and girls, though in South Korea the playground variety, the same as is known elsewhere in the world, is also commonly called a see-sa (시소).