heebie-jeebies

the term 'heebie-jeebies' is a fanciful american english coinage from the 1920s, popularized by the cartoonist billy de beck. it belongs to a class of reduplicative words where a base syllable ('heebie') is repeated with a variation in the initial consonant to create a rhyming, often humorous or emphatic effect ('jeebies'). such formations, like 'hocus-pocus' or 'hoity-toity', are driven by phonetic playfulness rather than classical etymology, using sound symbolism to evoke a sensory or emotional state—in this case, a sense of jittery anxiety or creeps.

this is a reduplicative compound, a playful, non-literal formation where 'heebie' and 'jeebies' are rhyming nonsense syllables created for their sound effect.