Kebbie-lebbie noun altercation, wrangling
‘“I didna think - I mean, I didna have it in mind to cause a kebbie-lebbie, truly not.”’ (Voyager)
Kebbie-lebbie is a reduplicated word, on the lines of hanky-panky, mumbo-jumbo and walky-talky. The first element in kebbie-lebbie is related to English gab and gabble, and to modern Dutch kibbelen ‘wrangle’. The element -le in gabble, kibbelen seems to be what is known as a frequentative, indicating that the activity expressed by gab-/kibb- is happening a lot. It would seem likely that the le- in lebbie might derive from a similar element, having been transferred across to the second part of the form. It survives in various spellings, including cabby-labby and kabbilabbi, and there is a reduced form, cabby-lab, as in this 1864 citation from Arbroath: ‘… they had a lang cabby-lab aboot it’.
The word has been around a while. It seems to be primarily an eastern form, found as far north as Shetland and Banffshire, but there are also records from Glasgow and Peebles. The verb kebbie (quarrel) on its own, without following lebbie, was recorded in the speech of Angus by the lexicographer John Jamieson in 1808 and, again, in the 1825 edition of his great Etymological Dictionary, where he defines kebbie-lebbie as an altercation ‘especially as carried on by a variety of persons speaking at one time’.
Another reduplicated form similar to kebbie-lebbie - also, it seems, Scots in origin - is argy-bargy, as recorded in the Scotsman in 1912: ‘First there was an argie-bargie, syne there was a kebbie-lebbie’. Argy-bargy has become much more widespread. There are citations of it from emphatically English writers such as H G Wells (1905) and J B Priestley (1948). Scotland on Sunday (1994) glosses kebbie-lebbie in this story from Aberdeen: ‘The thought of a Doric opera may not have many aficionados around the shelters of Guild Street but the subject has caused a right ol’ cabby labby (rough translation: argy-bargy) within the north-east’s art world.’
Kebbie-lebbie can also be a verb. The Shetland News of 1898 reminds us that the Scots of the islands is very different from that to be found elsewhere in the country: ‘I saa i’ da paper last ook, a lok o’ dem kabbielabbian aboot it.’