"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Pleonasm

 
Pleonasm is using more words than necessary; redundancy in wording; the use of more words (or even word-parts) than necessary to express an idea clearly. A closely related concept is rhetorical tautology, in which essentially the same thing is said more than once in different words.
 
Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8 November 2009 at 02:11

    What a wonderful word! And perfect for me. I used to get teased when I was working because I never could write a short memo -- I always had to give everyone all the nuances.
    Canadian Chickadee

    ReplyDelete
  2. GB9 November 2009 at 04:51

    Ah. You've arrived at one of my favourite words. I once manageged to discomfit a pedant by pointing out that I had not, as he suggested, been tautological although I pled guilty to being pleonastic.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)