‘PROPER see-saws made with a long plank so that you can go very high and have to hold on tight…..you don’t often see such exciting ones now. A missed learning opportunity?’ (Let the Children Play)
‘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”…. 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….
In the southeastern New England region of the United States, it is sometimes referred to as a tilt or a tilting board. Makeshift seesaws are used for acrobatics. Speakers in northeastern Massachusetts, United States, sometimes call them teedle boards. In the Narragansett Bay area the term changes to dandle or dandle board…. “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-so (시소).’
photo via Precious Childhood
Old School Garden 