The theme of the week is: super-duper terms, sometimes also called ricochet words. "Reduplication".

Today's AW-WAD is "holus-bolus" [Day 5]: Please scroll down.

The AW-WAD for Day 1 is:

airy-fairy (AIR-ee FAIR-ee) adjective

1. Light, delicate, fragile.

2. Fanciful, impractical, unrealistic.

[From Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1830 poem Lilian whose opening lines are: Airy, Fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can.]

"Airy-fairy"! Now that's a super-duper change of pace, Anu.

I'm going to post a whole week's worth of "airy-fairy" words in one ALAD this week, so I'll post it here and be done with it. [That will please themilum because he will have only one ALAD to honor with "Place Two" instead of the usual five.]

If you skip through life splish-splash
Life's an airy-fairy bash.
But never flip-flop
Or you'll slip-slop
Through a loosey-goosey, mish-mash.

Edit: Oops! I fib-flubbed! I couldn't resist doing an ALAD for "hubble-bubble". [As Maverick would say: ;) ]

I didn't know these were all "ricochet" words, but it makes sense.

Have you ever heard of a "ricochet romance"? Slam-bam, thank you, m'am.

Looks like "airy-fairy" took a turn for the worse after D. H. Lawrence got hold of it:

"ORIGINS: Early usage of airy fairy (Tennyson, WS Gilbert) relates to being delicate. By 1920s (DH Lawrence) it had become disparaging, meaning weak and insubstantial. By the late 19th Century, "fairy" was an anti-gay insult. Now almost a comic term, could have been applied by Dennis the Menace to Walter the Softy." ["Walter the Softy"?]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/e-cyclopedia/1666371.stm