Flim-flam

Means a piece of nonsense or twaddle designed to trick or deceive, dates from the early 16th century and is probably of old Scandinavian origin, akin to the Old Norse flim meaning mockery. It sometimes appears as flam without the flim from the 17th century onwards. Flim-flam belongs to a category of words known as compound gradational nouns, which evolve by a process that some call reduplication, like flip-flop, ding-dong, zigzag etc.