seesaw

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a long board balanced in the middle that children sit on at each end to go up and down

   The children laughed as they played on the seesaw.

2. 2
   verb

   to keep changing back and forth between two states or levels

   Stock prices seesawed all afternoon.

Probably a frequentative imitative of rhythmic back-and-forth, up-and-down or zigzagging motion, such as teeter-totter, zigzag, flip-flop, ping pong, etc., under the umbrella term of reduplication; also likely influenced by the verbs see and saw of either present or past tense.

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