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This file was exceeding 45K, so the first half was moved to: Talk:Pleonasm/archive01
NOTE: This page has not flowed in chronological order, and it was not possible to easily refactor it. So considerable current commentary [as of Oct. 2004] is in that file. Check there if you don't find it here.-- NathanHawking 01:36, 2004 Oct 19 (UTC)
white snow and green grass are some of the canonical examples in my native language. Where are the canonical examples in the article? -- User:MarSch, 08:54, March 5, 2006
My favourite pleonasm is "underground cave". Don't know whether this is "canonical", but it seems to be quite popular, and I am always humorously amused when I visually see it in textual writing. Keep up the good work, I sez. It would be engagingly interesting if anyone agrees with me that the main article is far too wordy, verbose, and long. Should all of the discussions involving foreign languages other than English be deleted, expunged, removed and erased for the sake of transparent clarity ? I also adoringly love the (mainly US American) customary habit and common practice of adding uselessly redundant prepositions (e.g."meet up with" where simply plain "meet" is intended). This always and forever strikes me impactfully and hilariously amusing. Why stop with just a pair of two ? g4oep
I've heard of many legal pleonasms such as 'breaking and entering' or 'to aid and abett'. Apparently these come from the Norman conquest, when those writing were not sure if the french-derived word meant the same as the german-derived word, and so included both. These pleonasms have stuck into modern legal wordings. Daniel ( ☎) 11:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
As a side to that, often two words with similar meanings will have different takes on them, with the french-derived meaning being subtler, and the german-derived one 'earthier'. An example is 'obtain' and 'get'.
Are these worthy of inclusion in the article? It would need better examples (mine are pathetic) and sources. Daniel ( ☎) 11:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed the explanation of deja vu because the exact literal meaning of deja vu in French is a bit of trivia that is irrelevant to its status as a pleonasm. Including the information just makes it harder to understand the point the paragraph is trying to make.
Deja vu in the example is not a pleonasm in the same way that The La Brea Tap Pits is. While deja vu literally means 'already seen', it is normally used in French to mean deja vu is the English language sense (the creepy feeling that you've experienced something before). Even if deja vu did not mean 'already seen' in French the phrase 'I'm getting deja vu all over again' would still be a pleonasm.
Maybe if the phrase was 'I've already seen deja vu'... Ashmoo 06:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Can we please add something to the little note on irregardless about the word 'irrespective'? I always think of irrespective when I see or hear irregardless (as well as thinking of regardless). I do believe that irregardless is a confusion of the two terms more than simply an over-negation of 'with regard to.' Or at least mention that 'irrespective' is the correct use of "ir-" and the words are similiar in meaning. RoseWill 10:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
"put that glass over there on the table" would not necessarily have only one meaning if there were only one table in the room. If it were a long table, it could mean "at that end of the table, not this end." A better example would be more appropriate.
Also, if someone were pointing to specific part of the table. Although I did not think of any such thing when I was reading that section. RoseWill 09:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Our example of a tmesis says "I abso-damned-lutely agree!". Is it just me, or does that sound really unnatural? I can see "abso-fucking-lutely", I can see "abso-bloody-lutely" and probably some others, but 'damned' just doesn't sound right there to me. We probably don't want to change it to 'fucking' as it could be gratuitously offensive, and 'bloody' might be too geospecific. Any thoughts? Skittle 15:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
"Off of" being primarily American, could we find another example? Stevage 02:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
It seems very strange to me that the author of this othwerwise very erudite article uses the expression outside of - in my experience one of the most common pleonasms (with its sister inside of). -- Colin Bottoms 15:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Removed this:
This appears to be pure speculation, and a glance at a good dictionary on the author's part would have sufficed to disprove it. Reduplication is not a "linguistic neologism", humorous or otherwise. It was borrowed directly from Latin with the current meaning centuries ago. Bassington 05:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
These were also already mentioned [ the archive]. — LlywelynII 11:43, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Not disagreeing with you, Stirling Newberry, but I would be interested to know why this one doesn't qualify. It seems to follow the same pattern as the La Ristorante and La Brea examples. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:12, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Surely "La Brea" in this context is a proper noun referring to a place. So its not redundant. Pedantic, yes, but so is much of this article! - Anon
Not actually sure where I stand on this as I noticed it myself and it's been kind of bugging me:
Do all Rugby clubs in the city of Rugby (such as Rugby Lions RFC and Rugby Welsh RFC, see here http://services.hopewiser.com/cgi-bin/rfu_prox.cgi and type in CV21 2JS) count as Pleonasms seeing as Rugby Football is specifically that type of football developed in Rugby or is it the case that Rugby is used slightly differently in each case, being a noun and then an adjective in the cases mentioned? Does the extra 'Rugby' serve only to distinguish these clubs from Rugby's (Association) Football club and is it thus a Rhetorical Tautology?
Discuss (or Dismiss)
I was born in Rugby. Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 09:15, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Two things. Firstly, no-one else has heard of Yogi Berra unless they have a particular interested in historic Baseball catchers. This article needs a more generic quotee than he. I appreciate the enormous US leanings of Wiki, but English is spoken by others besides you and any linguistical articles need to have a more worldly viewpoint.
Secondly the quote alluded to within the "Subtle redundancies" section cannot be an ironic play on words. Irony being a meaning unintended by the author and a play on words being a deliberate attempt at deriving humour (sorry, humor [sic]) by twisting expected grammatical structures. VonBlade 22:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I just read this article and I have to congratulate however wrote this line of pure poetry:
I'm assuming that we are all for eschewing circumlocution in order for meaning and context be self-apparent? :D Seriously, this could only be improved if it was written in trochaic hexameter. -- Oskar 13:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but this article is unfocused, and it looks like it's got a lot of original research. I am also a grammar fan, but I don't think Wikipedia is the right place to write an extended essay on pleonasm. Please, let's try to either trim this article or find some sources for most of it. Motorneuron 15:08, 22 September 2007 (UTC)motorneuron
An example is cited, "O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me" - this seems at worst a case of simple repetition, rather than a pleonastic phrase on the order of "trapezoid-shaped". I'd interpret it to be entirely informative - just because you have many enemies doesn't mean they're all rising against you right now, and if they are then I suppose it's a good time to pray! The same text says there are many other examples, but if this was the best the editor had to offer... 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 06:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
The article says, '"erotically" doesn't look "right" to many Americans', but unlike "eroticly" it does look right to Merriam-Webster (at least on http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/erotically). 70.111.91.127 ( talk) 05:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Halfway through the "Subtler redundancies" section, the following exmaples appear:
Then this paragraph follows:
Actually, a proper headline would be: "MUSIC DROWNS OUT BURGLARY". In headline style, "a" and "the" are usually dropped, and present tense is preferred. A tabloid headline would read: "MUSIC DROWNS [your city] BURGLAR!" In tabloid headlines, meaning may be deliberately confused, to increase sales, by inducing cognitive dissonance in passers-by. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morenus ( talk • contribs) 17:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
The "Other forms" section ends thusly:
With good reason, Shakespeare's English is rarely considered faulty. The sentence is fine wordplay, and belongs in its context. It is, in fact, a line of blank verse. On its own, however, it could be shortened or altered, without removing meaning or destroying the sentence. To wit:
There's no evidence that Hebrew has influenced the infixation of fucking etc. (and the process doesn't exist in Yiddish). Note that Lighter's Hist. Dict. of Am. Slang attests infixation of bloody in Brit. Eng. from 1895, and records an analogous use of jolly from at least the 1870's. There's also no Hebrew model for reduplications like topless-shmopless, and in any case, Hebrew has had virtually no direct influence on colloquial spoken English. This is a pure yiddishism.
This article was severely joke-vandalized, by its lead section (second para. if I recall) being tripled in size by someone adding around 4 or 5 pleonastic restatements of the main point of the paragraph, and no one noticed for quite some time. I do watchlist this article, but I do not edit every day, and the article would benefit from additional watchers. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Despite dire warnings not to proliferate examples, I added " mutatis mutandis" as a cognate object example, the point being to show that the construction is old, and is not specific to English. (Arguably this should be under Polyptoton). Geoffrey.landis ( talk) 01:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Prolixity and Pleonasm: These two articles essentially discuss the same subject, pleonasm simply in a more systematic manner. Prolixity should be merged into this article. Neelix ( talk) 20:32, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Tautology: What's the difference between a pleonasm and a linguistic tautology?-- Arado 23:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Prolixity, Wordiness, Pleonasm, Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language): My instinct is that there is enough overlap between Pleonasm, Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language) to justify a merger into this article. However, I think Prolixity should not be merged into the article, because it refers to wordiness in general rather than specific tautologous statements. So these five articles should become two: one for Pleonasm including descriptions of Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language), and a second " Prolixity" which should be merged with Wordiness. Gregcaletta ( talk) 05:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Note that this subject has also been discussed in the archive. — LlywelynII 11:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
"Tuna fish" is also used in the UK.-- Greg K Nicholson 02:28:57, 2005-08-09 (UTC)
Relocated from User talk:SMcCandlish because it is about this article's (and Tuna's) content. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC) I see that you were involved in the "tuna fish" issue on Pleonasm back in 2006. Like the person who you reverted, I also draw a distinction between "tuna fish" (an ingredient) and "tuna" (an animal). You were quite right to revert it without citation, but I just wanted you to know that I have located a citation (Merriam-Webster) and added it to the article. I believe it to be largely regional (I am from California, but my relatives are from the east coast, so I cannot confirm the "source" of my usage), as it is apparent that this is not a universal distinction. -- Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately "tuna fish" is not a very good example. Tuna is also the (very non-fishy) fruit of the prickly pear cactus. 26 June 2009
Currently, the article has (among others) this example of a pleonasm, with an explanatory note:
* "From that day mortal, and this happie State/ Shalt loose, expell'd from hence into a World/ Of woe and sorrow"— John Milton, Paradise Lost. (See also Shakespeare's "Sonnet 81".) [This is questionable as an example because The author could be using one of several definitions of "hence." Hence could mean in this context "because of a preceding fact or premise;" therefore the statement would mean, that because the subject is "expell'd" from the original state it is placed "into a World/ Of woe and sorrow." Also an archaic use of hence is "from this time - henceforth," so the quotation could be referring to time instead of place, or to time as well as place. A good method for determining what the authors intent was would be trying to determine which of these words would be an Anachronism.<ref> hence - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary</ref>
I feel this example should be removed. I think the note is correct that "hence" has a number of different meanings, and thus, that "from hence" is not a clear-cut example of a pleonasm—the "from" serves to clarify which meaning of "hence" is meant.
But I think this long discussion of the meanings of "hence" is a distraction in an article on "Pleonasm". If this isn't a clear-cut example of a pleonasm, we should simply remove it, not append a paragraph explaining why it's not a great example. (It's not like there's any shortage of pleonasticity for us to draw on!)
I deleted the example, but User:Aladdin Sane reverted my change with the comment Disagree, default *keep* with no discussion. I thought I'd ask other editors to comment. Thanks! -- Narsil ( talk) 01:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
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Disclaimers: I am responding to a third opinion request made at WP:3O. I have made no previous edits on Pleonasm and have no known association with the editors involved in this discussion. The third opinion process (FAQ) is informal and I have no special powers or authority apart from being a fresh pair of eyes. Third opinions are not tiebreakers, and should not be "counted" in determining whether or not consensus has been reached. My personal standards for issuing third opinions can be viewed here. |
Opinion: I believe the Milton example should be removed. Examples in a Wikipedia article are for the purpose of clarifying the subject matter. One legitimate purpose of clarification, as Aladdin Sane correctly points out, is to illustrate circumstances in which the subject under discussion is uncertain. The problem with the Milton example is that it is unclear what Milton meant by "hence." That, and the fact that the language verges on being archaic, makes it an ambiguous example rather than an example of an ambiguity. There are, moreover, unambiguous examples of language which may or may not be pleonasistic later in the article. |
What's next: Once you've considered this opinion click here to see what happens next.— TRANSPORTERMAN ( TALK) 16:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC) |
I added a dispute template to the article yesterday. I think it suffers from several issues, including a lack of (appropriate) references and rambling. I'll be polishing it over the next few weeks (sporadically, as I'm somewhat busy). I of course invite discussion of my edits, and any major changes I'll bring up here. — æk Talk 11:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I have added a section to Syntactic Pleonasms with an example of the use of the pleonastic "it" in English.
I have not yet read the archive, but it seems that some of the discussion centred around the inclusion of Spanish examples of pleonasms. This English example contrasts and complements the Spanish example and is well researched (e.g. Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Blackwell Publishing. pp 62). Alephsmith ( talk) 06:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Even after looking through earlier disputes about examples on the archive page, I have a suggestion.
I find the "may be possible" example (under 1.1 Idiomatic expressions) inappropriate. Consider this: "It may be possible to get a refund" expresses uncertainty about whether a refund is obtainable, without any redundancy.
My impression is that use of "it may be possible" to mean "it is possible" is very rare (other than reluctant agreement that it is possible by someone who asserted that it is not possible but has been proved wrong).
The related examples from French and Romanian would also have to be removed but I expect speakers or those (and/or other) languages could supply other examples which illustrate redundancy rather than absence of redundancy.
I'd also like to suggest that "period of time" may be a less controversial example than "tuna fish" (although to me "period of time" is a highly remarkable pleonasm).
Finally, I feel that the third paragraph here ("In a satellite-framed language ...") could do with at least one example. 220.157.135.101 ( talk) 02:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Because "rains" can be both a noun and a verb, the addition of the word "it" actually does add meaning. It marks "rains" as a verb. I think it might be good to replace this example with a verb that doesn't have a noun form.
I constantly hear people from the UK (even BBC newscasters) use this redundant "time". Examples include: "...5 minutes' time", "...2 days' time", etc. Why is it so often used when it is so obviously pleonistic? I think we should include it in the main article. Thoughts? -- Thorwald ( talk) 01:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
This sentence is not true. "Possible" here means that something can be done. So someone could say "It may be possible to climb mount everest." (because it may not be possible.) Was the person who wrote this a native English speaker? -- Ryan Wise ( talk) 20:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Even though the first word in the phrase (being the definite article in this case), lets us know right away that the grammatical number of the entire phrase is plural, the German language still dictates that the attributive adjective, the noun which is our subject, and the verb undertaken by our subject all must also express and agree in grammatical number. Whoever put this in the article doesn't really know German and shouldn't feel entitled to instruct others... Of course, the definite article "Die" can be feminine/singular as well as "unisex" plural: die alten Frauen ("the old women") or die alte Frau ("the old woman"). Therefore, the statement that the first word in the phrase lets us know right away that the grammatical number of the entire phrase is plural is nonsense. This has to be changed, but I don't know how to do it without doing too much damage to the argument. :( kate theobaldy ( talk) 13:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Shellshock and Post-traumatic stress disorder are not the same thing. The clinical term for shellshock is Combat stress reaction, PSTD may result from it or from other trauma sources, and has different symptoms. 205.175.99.253 ( talk) 01:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)PaeneJoscose
It's cute to use the word "pleonasm" itself in one of the examples, but it's not much help to the reader who presumably came to this article because he or she is not sure about what a pleonasm is. The examples need to be clear to somebody who does not know what "pleonasm" means. -- 83.244.158.242 ( talk · contribs), 11:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
In the section "Professional and Scholarly Use", there is a humorous quote by Lord Westbury. The purported irony is that the description "redundant and pleonastic" is itself a pleonasm. However, it seems that redundancy is subsumed by pleonasm, in which case neither word may be superfluous as each connotes differently. If the definition of pleonasm as stated at the beginning of the article ("the use of more words or word-parts than is necessary for clear expression") is correct, then redundancy, which is defined by Wikipedia as "the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea" represents only one kind of pleonasm. It only takes an example of pleonasm that does not involve redundancy to confirm this (such as the word "it" at the beginning of this sentence). See Wikipedia article on "coreference") for other non-redundant examples of neoplasm involving the word "it". Therefore, I will insert a "Dubious" tag after the relevant text in the article to permit discourse on this. 68.100.218.97 ( talk) 04:42, 23 July 2012 (UTC)pem
It notes the late Middle English form publicall and 18th century form publical, derived from late Latin publicalis (attested in Britain in the 8th century). It's noted as obsolete and rare and given in the examples:
Kothog ( talk) 04:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
What category, if any, would this fall under? Also, 'pretty beautiful'.
Is 'safe haven' really a pleonasm? At very least it's a topic of debate (Google returns several articles discussing it). The original meaning of 'haven' is 'harbour', which meant a place where a ship could shelter from the elements - but not necessarily from human threats (political, criminal etc.) 'Safe haven' implies a greater degree of safety. Eggybacon ( talk) 18:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Per this edit, the usage of this page was established as American English. Kindly maintain it consistently, pending a new consensus to the contrary. — LlywelynII 11:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
The sentence "formal English requires an overt subject in each clause" is incorrect. "Go home" is a grammatically complete clause in formal English with no overt subject. Any ideas how best to correct this? Adding a qualifying adverb (e.g., "typically requires") seems too vague to differentiate cases that require the dummy pronoun from those that don't, whereas inserting an explanation of imperative mood would distract from the point of the paragraph. 2605:6000:EE4A:2900:907E:B8AD:F6E:9CCA ( talk) 19:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I cannot tell the difference between the two subjects. Furthermore, the tautology article s poorly sourced, is of an an inappropriate tone, and is possibly original research. Merge Tautology (rhetoric) into Pleonasm. — Mr. Guye ( talk) ( contribs) 01:12, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree to merge. Tautology page is somewhat short and can be merged as a section in Pleonasm. Planet Star 04:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
A tautology and a pleonasm are clearly distinct. A pleonasm repeats words with similar meaning: "Black darkness". A tautology is a logical argument where something is used to demonstrate itself: "The higher earnings of men indicates that men may have a better income". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkborregaard ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Surely the best example in French is the expression "Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?", which is taken to mean "What is that?", but literally means "What is it that that is that that?" Perhaps it should be mentioned in the article. Kelisi ( talk) 17:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
This section claims that "She slept a deep sleep" and "We wept tears of joy" "...are not actually redundant (unlike 'She slept a sleep' or 'We wept tears') because the object's modifiers provide additional information." But the modifiers are not the redundant part of either phrase, and the modifiers can be retained while eliminating the redundancy: "She slept deeply" or "She fell into a deep sleep" or "We wept with joy" or "We shed tears of joy" are all nonredundant wordings that retain the same meaning as the original phrases. So I fail to see how this makes the phrases "not actually redundant." If anyone can explain this, please do! Otherwise, as it's unsourced anyway, I'll remove it. 2605:A601:4042:5800:6038:ABC8:26E1:DF7 ( talk) 16:36, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
It seems to me that "every mother's child" in The Christmas Song may refer to a formerly more common expression, that was meant as a way of explicitly including EVERYone without exception. Shakespeare seems to have been playing on the same theme when he wrote "None of woman born shall harm Macbeth", a statement that he eventually makes the subject of a twist. TooManyFingers ( talk) 22:37, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
@ Mathglot: Per the comment of Special:diff/old/1080552717 23:12, 1 April 2022 edit:
This entire section, including all the subsections, has one, poor reference in Korean. The entire content appears to be original research.
It's inappropriate to be dismissive of a source based on its language, especially given the ease of using translation tools, directly available in the most popular browser as well as through plugins. Nevrtheless, this content was actually added in the 10:13, edit of 2 November 2005 edit, while the source was published in 2020. Whoops ... can you say citogenesis ?
Based on that, I have removed the citation and replaced it with a {{cn}}
.
Fabrickator (
talk)
01:39, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
,
in Korean" be better? Per
WP:NONENG, English references are preferred, when of equal quality. The prospect that there are no English sources equivalent to the Korean source about pleonasms, is vanishingly unlikely, so, "[poor reference] in Korean" means, "not the best reference we could get for this topic per WP:NONENG". But it seems like in trying to save a few words, I've just ended up having to explain it with twice as many words; oh, well. It's just as well, though, as you felt moved to write about it, and perhaps you wouldn't have found the circular referencing otherwise, so all's well that ends well! Cheers,
Mathglot (
talk)
02:53, 2 April 2022 (UTC)how about "shrimp scampi" in the foreign section? while it has come to mean a specific preparation in english, the original meaning is actually "shrimp" itself. 2601:19C:527F:A660:506A:D5A1:5D6A:27B4 ( talk) 17:00, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
Calling things in this section "tautological" is unnecessarily dismissive and, frankly, inaccurate - it's not "needless" repetition. It's clearly a variant of Contrastive focus reduplication, where the language itself is the focal point in the construction. "Sahara Desert" is not "Gobi Desert" is not "Kalahari Desert" - they're not interchangeable, and saying "Desert desert" doesn't actually indicate which of the (at least) three you mean. It needs a better, more specific name, and I'm not sure this is actually a pleonasm at all.
Note also that this occurs in more languages than just English and Yiddish, as seen in e.g. List of tautological place names, which includes examples in Arabic, French, Icelandic, Indonesian, and Spanish (and likely others I can't quickly identify). 2601:646:9D01:B930:5F46:8CE1:895D:F4F ( talk) 11:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Yiddish words do not "come from" German. Yiddish and German share a common ancestor, Middle High German, which is not the same thing as contemporary German. For example, לייב/leyb comes from Middle High German lewe, not from contemporary German "Löwe" as was stated in the article. I have substituted Middle High German words as appropriate, but a better solution might be to elide the ancestor words entirely and simply identify the appropriate Yiddish words as being of Germanic origin. Lazarusloafer ( talk) 04:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
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This file was exceeding 45K, so the first half was moved to: Talk:Pleonasm/archive01
NOTE: This page has not flowed in chronological order, and it was not possible to easily refactor it. So considerable current commentary [as of Oct. 2004] is in that file. Check there if you don't find it here.-- NathanHawking 01:36, 2004 Oct 19 (UTC)
white snow and green grass are some of the canonical examples in my native language. Where are the canonical examples in the article? -- User:MarSch, 08:54, March 5, 2006
My favourite pleonasm is "underground cave". Don't know whether this is "canonical", but it seems to be quite popular, and I am always humorously amused when I visually see it in textual writing. Keep up the good work, I sez. It would be engagingly interesting if anyone agrees with me that the main article is far too wordy, verbose, and long. Should all of the discussions involving foreign languages other than English be deleted, expunged, removed and erased for the sake of transparent clarity ? I also adoringly love the (mainly US American) customary habit and common practice of adding uselessly redundant prepositions (e.g."meet up with" where simply plain "meet" is intended). This always and forever strikes me impactfully and hilariously amusing. Why stop with just a pair of two ? g4oep
I've heard of many legal pleonasms such as 'breaking and entering' or 'to aid and abett'. Apparently these come from the Norman conquest, when those writing were not sure if the french-derived word meant the same as the german-derived word, and so included both. These pleonasms have stuck into modern legal wordings. Daniel ( ☎) 11:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
As a side to that, often two words with similar meanings will have different takes on them, with the french-derived meaning being subtler, and the german-derived one 'earthier'. An example is 'obtain' and 'get'.
Are these worthy of inclusion in the article? It would need better examples (mine are pathetic) and sources. Daniel ( ☎) 11:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed the explanation of deja vu because the exact literal meaning of deja vu in French is a bit of trivia that is irrelevant to its status as a pleonasm. Including the information just makes it harder to understand the point the paragraph is trying to make.
Deja vu in the example is not a pleonasm in the same way that The La Brea Tap Pits is. While deja vu literally means 'already seen', it is normally used in French to mean deja vu is the English language sense (the creepy feeling that you've experienced something before). Even if deja vu did not mean 'already seen' in French the phrase 'I'm getting deja vu all over again' would still be a pleonasm.
Maybe if the phrase was 'I've already seen deja vu'... Ashmoo 06:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Can we please add something to the little note on irregardless about the word 'irrespective'? I always think of irrespective when I see or hear irregardless (as well as thinking of regardless). I do believe that irregardless is a confusion of the two terms more than simply an over-negation of 'with regard to.' Or at least mention that 'irrespective' is the correct use of "ir-" and the words are similiar in meaning. RoseWill 10:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
"put that glass over there on the table" would not necessarily have only one meaning if there were only one table in the room. If it were a long table, it could mean "at that end of the table, not this end." A better example would be more appropriate.
Also, if someone were pointing to specific part of the table. Although I did not think of any such thing when I was reading that section. RoseWill 09:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Our example of a tmesis says "I abso-damned-lutely agree!". Is it just me, or does that sound really unnatural? I can see "abso-fucking-lutely", I can see "abso-bloody-lutely" and probably some others, but 'damned' just doesn't sound right there to me. We probably don't want to change it to 'fucking' as it could be gratuitously offensive, and 'bloody' might be too geospecific. Any thoughts? Skittle 15:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
"Off of" being primarily American, could we find another example? Stevage 02:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
It seems very strange to me that the author of this othwerwise very erudite article uses the expression outside of - in my experience one of the most common pleonasms (with its sister inside of). -- Colin Bottoms 15:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Removed this:
This appears to be pure speculation, and a glance at a good dictionary on the author's part would have sufficed to disprove it. Reduplication is not a "linguistic neologism", humorous or otherwise. It was borrowed directly from Latin with the current meaning centuries ago. Bassington 05:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
These were also already mentioned [ the archive]. — LlywelynII 11:43, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Not disagreeing with you, Stirling Newberry, but I would be interested to know why this one doesn't qualify. It seems to follow the same pattern as the La Ristorante and La Brea examples. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:12, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Surely "La Brea" in this context is a proper noun referring to a place. So its not redundant. Pedantic, yes, but so is much of this article! - Anon
Not actually sure where I stand on this as I noticed it myself and it's been kind of bugging me:
Do all Rugby clubs in the city of Rugby (such as Rugby Lions RFC and Rugby Welsh RFC, see here http://services.hopewiser.com/cgi-bin/rfu_prox.cgi and type in CV21 2JS) count as Pleonasms seeing as Rugby Football is specifically that type of football developed in Rugby or is it the case that Rugby is used slightly differently in each case, being a noun and then an adjective in the cases mentioned? Does the extra 'Rugby' serve only to distinguish these clubs from Rugby's (Association) Football club and is it thus a Rhetorical Tautology?
Discuss (or Dismiss)
I was born in Rugby. Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 09:15, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Two things. Firstly, no-one else has heard of Yogi Berra unless they have a particular interested in historic Baseball catchers. This article needs a more generic quotee than he. I appreciate the enormous US leanings of Wiki, but English is spoken by others besides you and any linguistical articles need to have a more worldly viewpoint.
Secondly the quote alluded to within the "Subtle redundancies" section cannot be an ironic play on words. Irony being a meaning unintended by the author and a play on words being a deliberate attempt at deriving humour (sorry, humor [sic]) by twisting expected grammatical structures. VonBlade 22:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I just read this article and I have to congratulate however wrote this line of pure poetry:
I'm assuming that we are all for eschewing circumlocution in order for meaning and context be self-apparent? :D Seriously, this could only be improved if it was written in trochaic hexameter. -- Oskar 13:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but this article is unfocused, and it looks like it's got a lot of original research. I am also a grammar fan, but I don't think Wikipedia is the right place to write an extended essay on pleonasm. Please, let's try to either trim this article or find some sources for most of it. Motorneuron 15:08, 22 September 2007 (UTC)motorneuron
An example is cited, "O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me" - this seems at worst a case of simple repetition, rather than a pleonastic phrase on the order of "trapezoid-shaped". I'd interpret it to be entirely informative - just because you have many enemies doesn't mean they're all rising against you right now, and if they are then I suppose it's a good time to pray! The same text says there are many other examples, but if this was the best the editor had to offer... 70.15.116.59 ( talk) 06:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
The article says, '"erotically" doesn't look "right" to many Americans', but unlike "eroticly" it does look right to Merriam-Webster (at least on http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/erotically). 70.111.91.127 ( talk) 05:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Halfway through the "Subtler redundancies" section, the following exmaples appear:
Then this paragraph follows:
Actually, a proper headline would be: "MUSIC DROWNS OUT BURGLARY". In headline style, "a" and "the" are usually dropped, and present tense is preferred. A tabloid headline would read: "MUSIC DROWNS [your city] BURGLAR!" In tabloid headlines, meaning may be deliberately confused, to increase sales, by inducing cognitive dissonance in passers-by. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morenus ( talk • contribs) 17:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
The "Other forms" section ends thusly:
With good reason, Shakespeare's English is rarely considered faulty. The sentence is fine wordplay, and belongs in its context. It is, in fact, a line of blank verse. On its own, however, it could be shortened or altered, without removing meaning or destroying the sentence. To wit:
There's no evidence that Hebrew has influenced the infixation of fucking etc. (and the process doesn't exist in Yiddish). Note that Lighter's Hist. Dict. of Am. Slang attests infixation of bloody in Brit. Eng. from 1895, and records an analogous use of jolly from at least the 1870's. There's also no Hebrew model for reduplications like topless-shmopless, and in any case, Hebrew has had virtually no direct influence on colloquial spoken English. This is a pure yiddishism.
This article was severely joke-vandalized, by its lead section (second para. if I recall) being tripled in size by someone adding around 4 or 5 pleonastic restatements of the main point of the paragraph, and no one noticed for quite some time. I do watchlist this article, but I do not edit every day, and the article would benefit from additional watchers. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Despite dire warnings not to proliferate examples, I added " mutatis mutandis" as a cognate object example, the point being to show that the construction is old, and is not specific to English. (Arguably this should be under Polyptoton). Geoffrey.landis ( talk) 01:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Prolixity and Pleonasm: These two articles essentially discuss the same subject, pleonasm simply in a more systematic manner. Prolixity should be merged into this article. Neelix ( talk) 20:32, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Tautology: What's the difference between a pleonasm and a linguistic tautology?-- Arado 23:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Prolixity, Wordiness, Pleonasm, Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language): My instinct is that there is enough overlap between Pleonasm, Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language) to justify a merger into this article. However, I think Prolixity should not be merged into the article, because it refers to wordiness in general rather than specific tautologous statements. So these five articles should become two: one for Pleonasm including descriptions of Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language), and a second " Prolixity" which should be merged with Wordiness. Gregcaletta ( talk) 05:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Note that this subject has also been discussed in the archive. — LlywelynII 11:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
"Tuna fish" is also used in the UK.-- Greg K Nicholson 02:28:57, 2005-08-09 (UTC)
Relocated from User talk:SMcCandlish because it is about this article's (and Tuna's) content. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC) I see that you were involved in the "tuna fish" issue on Pleonasm back in 2006. Like the person who you reverted, I also draw a distinction between "tuna fish" (an ingredient) and "tuna" (an animal). You were quite right to revert it without citation, but I just wanted you to know that I have located a citation (Merriam-Webster) and added it to the article. I believe it to be largely regional (I am from California, but my relatives are from the east coast, so I cannot confirm the "source" of my usage), as it is apparent that this is not a universal distinction. -- Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately "tuna fish" is not a very good example. Tuna is also the (very non-fishy) fruit of the prickly pear cactus. 26 June 2009
Currently, the article has (among others) this example of a pleonasm, with an explanatory note:
* "From that day mortal, and this happie State/ Shalt loose, expell'd from hence into a World/ Of woe and sorrow"— John Milton, Paradise Lost. (See also Shakespeare's "Sonnet 81".) [This is questionable as an example because The author could be using one of several definitions of "hence." Hence could mean in this context "because of a preceding fact or premise;" therefore the statement would mean, that because the subject is "expell'd" from the original state it is placed "into a World/ Of woe and sorrow." Also an archaic use of hence is "from this time - henceforth," so the quotation could be referring to time instead of place, or to time as well as place. A good method for determining what the authors intent was would be trying to determine which of these words would be an Anachronism.<ref> hence - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary</ref>
I feel this example should be removed. I think the note is correct that "hence" has a number of different meanings, and thus, that "from hence" is not a clear-cut example of a pleonasm—the "from" serves to clarify which meaning of "hence" is meant.
But I think this long discussion of the meanings of "hence" is a distraction in an article on "Pleonasm". If this isn't a clear-cut example of a pleonasm, we should simply remove it, not append a paragraph explaining why it's not a great example. (It's not like there's any shortage of pleonasticity for us to draw on!)
I deleted the example, but User:Aladdin Sane reverted my change with the comment Disagree, default *keep* with no discussion. I thought I'd ask other editors to comment. Thanks! -- Narsil ( talk) 01:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
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Disclaimers: I am responding to a third opinion request made at WP:3O. I have made no previous edits on Pleonasm and have no known association with the editors involved in this discussion. The third opinion process (FAQ) is informal and I have no special powers or authority apart from being a fresh pair of eyes. Third opinions are not tiebreakers, and should not be "counted" in determining whether or not consensus has been reached. My personal standards for issuing third opinions can be viewed here. |
Opinion: I believe the Milton example should be removed. Examples in a Wikipedia article are for the purpose of clarifying the subject matter. One legitimate purpose of clarification, as Aladdin Sane correctly points out, is to illustrate circumstances in which the subject under discussion is uncertain. The problem with the Milton example is that it is unclear what Milton meant by "hence." That, and the fact that the language verges on being archaic, makes it an ambiguous example rather than an example of an ambiguity. There are, moreover, unambiguous examples of language which may or may not be pleonasistic later in the article. |
What's next: Once you've considered this opinion click here to see what happens next.— TRANSPORTERMAN ( TALK) 16:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC) |
I added a dispute template to the article yesterday. I think it suffers from several issues, including a lack of (appropriate) references and rambling. I'll be polishing it over the next few weeks (sporadically, as I'm somewhat busy). I of course invite discussion of my edits, and any major changes I'll bring up here. — æk Talk 11:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I have added a section to Syntactic Pleonasms with an example of the use of the pleonastic "it" in English.
I have not yet read the archive, but it seems that some of the discussion centred around the inclusion of Spanish examples of pleonasms. This English example contrasts and complements the Spanish example and is well researched (e.g. Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Blackwell Publishing. pp 62). Alephsmith ( talk) 06:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Even after looking through earlier disputes about examples on the archive page, I have a suggestion.
I find the "may be possible" example (under 1.1 Idiomatic expressions) inappropriate. Consider this: "It may be possible to get a refund" expresses uncertainty about whether a refund is obtainable, without any redundancy.
My impression is that use of "it may be possible" to mean "it is possible" is very rare (other than reluctant agreement that it is possible by someone who asserted that it is not possible but has been proved wrong).
The related examples from French and Romanian would also have to be removed but I expect speakers or those (and/or other) languages could supply other examples which illustrate redundancy rather than absence of redundancy.
I'd also like to suggest that "period of time" may be a less controversial example than "tuna fish" (although to me "period of time" is a highly remarkable pleonasm).
Finally, I feel that the third paragraph here ("In a satellite-framed language ...") could do with at least one example. 220.157.135.101 ( talk) 02:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Because "rains" can be both a noun and a verb, the addition of the word "it" actually does add meaning. It marks "rains" as a verb. I think it might be good to replace this example with a verb that doesn't have a noun form.
I constantly hear people from the UK (even BBC newscasters) use this redundant "time". Examples include: "...5 minutes' time", "...2 days' time", etc. Why is it so often used when it is so obviously pleonistic? I think we should include it in the main article. Thoughts? -- Thorwald ( talk) 01:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
This sentence is not true. "Possible" here means that something can be done. So someone could say "It may be possible to climb mount everest." (because it may not be possible.) Was the person who wrote this a native English speaker? -- Ryan Wise ( talk) 20:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Even though the first word in the phrase (being the definite article in this case), lets us know right away that the grammatical number of the entire phrase is plural, the German language still dictates that the attributive adjective, the noun which is our subject, and the verb undertaken by our subject all must also express and agree in grammatical number. Whoever put this in the article doesn't really know German and shouldn't feel entitled to instruct others... Of course, the definite article "Die" can be feminine/singular as well as "unisex" plural: die alten Frauen ("the old women") or die alte Frau ("the old woman"). Therefore, the statement that the first word in the phrase lets us know right away that the grammatical number of the entire phrase is plural is nonsense. This has to be changed, but I don't know how to do it without doing too much damage to the argument. :( kate theobaldy ( talk) 13:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Shellshock and Post-traumatic stress disorder are not the same thing. The clinical term for shellshock is Combat stress reaction, PSTD may result from it or from other trauma sources, and has different symptoms. 205.175.99.253 ( talk) 01:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)PaeneJoscose
It's cute to use the word "pleonasm" itself in one of the examples, but it's not much help to the reader who presumably came to this article because he or she is not sure about what a pleonasm is. The examples need to be clear to somebody who does not know what "pleonasm" means. -- 83.244.158.242 ( talk · contribs), 11:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
In the section "Professional and Scholarly Use", there is a humorous quote by Lord Westbury. The purported irony is that the description "redundant and pleonastic" is itself a pleonasm. However, it seems that redundancy is subsumed by pleonasm, in which case neither word may be superfluous as each connotes differently. If the definition of pleonasm as stated at the beginning of the article ("the use of more words or word-parts than is necessary for clear expression") is correct, then redundancy, which is defined by Wikipedia as "the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea" represents only one kind of pleonasm. It only takes an example of pleonasm that does not involve redundancy to confirm this (such as the word "it" at the beginning of this sentence). See Wikipedia article on "coreference") for other non-redundant examples of neoplasm involving the word "it". Therefore, I will insert a "Dubious" tag after the relevant text in the article to permit discourse on this. 68.100.218.97 ( talk) 04:42, 23 July 2012 (UTC)pem
It notes the late Middle English form publicall and 18th century form publical, derived from late Latin publicalis (attested in Britain in the 8th century). It's noted as obsolete and rare and given in the examples:
Kothog ( talk) 04:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
What category, if any, would this fall under? Also, 'pretty beautiful'.
Is 'safe haven' really a pleonasm? At very least it's a topic of debate (Google returns several articles discussing it). The original meaning of 'haven' is 'harbour', which meant a place where a ship could shelter from the elements - but not necessarily from human threats (political, criminal etc.) 'Safe haven' implies a greater degree of safety. Eggybacon ( talk) 18:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Per this edit, the usage of this page was established as American English. Kindly maintain it consistently, pending a new consensus to the contrary. — LlywelynII 11:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
The sentence "formal English requires an overt subject in each clause" is incorrect. "Go home" is a grammatically complete clause in formal English with no overt subject. Any ideas how best to correct this? Adding a qualifying adverb (e.g., "typically requires") seems too vague to differentiate cases that require the dummy pronoun from those that don't, whereas inserting an explanation of imperative mood would distract from the point of the paragraph. 2605:6000:EE4A:2900:907E:B8AD:F6E:9CCA ( talk) 19:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I cannot tell the difference between the two subjects. Furthermore, the tautology article s poorly sourced, is of an an inappropriate tone, and is possibly original research. Merge Tautology (rhetoric) into Pleonasm. — Mr. Guye ( talk) ( contribs) 01:12, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree to merge. Tautology page is somewhat short and can be merged as a section in Pleonasm. Planet Star 04:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
A tautology and a pleonasm are clearly distinct. A pleonasm repeats words with similar meaning: "Black darkness". A tautology is a logical argument where something is used to demonstrate itself: "The higher earnings of men indicates that men may have a better income". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkborregaard ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Surely the best example in French is the expression "Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?", which is taken to mean "What is that?", but literally means "What is it that that is that that?" Perhaps it should be mentioned in the article. Kelisi ( talk) 17:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
This section claims that "She slept a deep sleep" and "We wept tears of joy" "...are not actually redundant (unlike 'She slept a sleep' or 'We wept tears') because the object's modifiers provide additional information." But the modifiers are not the redundant part of either phrase, and the modifiers can be retained while eliminating the redundancy: "She slept deeply" or "She fell into a deep sleep" or "We wept with joy" or "We shed tears of joy" are all nonredundant wordings that retain the same meaning as the original phrases. So I fail to see how this makes the phrases "not actually redundant." If anyone can explain this, please do! Otherwise, as it's unsourced anyway, I'll remove it. 2605:A601:4042:5800:6038:ABC8:26E1:DF7 ( talk) 16:36, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
It seems to me that "every mother's child" in The Christmas Song may refer to a formerly more common expression, that was meant as a way of explicitly including EVERYone without exception. Shakespeare seems to have been playing on the same theme when he wrote "None of woman born shall harm Macbeth", a statement that he eventually makes the subject of a twist. TooManyFingers ( talk) 22:37, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
@ Mathglot: Per the comment of Special:diff/old/1080552717 23:12, 1 April 2022 edit:
This entire section, including all the subsections, has one, poor reference in Korean. The entire content appears to be original research.
It's inappropriate to be dismissive of a source based on its language, especially given the ease of using translation tools, directly available in the most popular browser as well as through plugins. Nevrtheless, this content was actually added in the 10:13, edit of 2 November 2005 edit, while the source was published in 2020. Whoops ... can you say citogenesis ?
Based on that, I have removed the citation and replaced it with a {{cn}}
.
Fabrickator (
talk)
01:39, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
,
in Korean" be better? Per
WP:NONENG, English references are preferred, when of equal quality. The prospect that there are no English sources equivalent to the Korean source about pleonasms, is vanishingly unlikely, so, "[poor reference] in Korean" means, "not the best reference we could get for this topic per WP:NONENG". But it seems like in trying to save a few words, I've just ended up having to explain it with twice as many words; oh, well. It's just as well, though, as you felt moved to write about it, and perhaps you wouldn't have found the circular referencing otherwise, so all's well that ends well! Cheers,
Mathglot (
talk)
02:53, 2 April 2022 (UTC)how about "shrimp scampi" in the foreign section? while it has come to mean a specific preparation in english, the original meaning is actually "shrimp" itself. 2601:19C:527F:A660:506A:D5A1:5D6A:27B4 ( talk) 17:00, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
Calling things in this section "tautological" is unnecessarily dismissive and, frankly, inaccurate - it's not "needless" repetition. It's clearly a variant of Contrastive focus reduplication, where the language itself is the focal point in the construction. "Sahara Desert" is not "Gobi Desert" is not "Kalahari Desert" - they're not interchangeable, and saying "Desert desert" doesn't actually indicate which of the (at least) three you mean. It needs a better, more specific name, and I'm not sure this is actually a pleonasm at all.
Note also that this occurs in more languages than just English and Yiddish, as seen in e.g. List of tautological place names, which includes examples in Arabic, French, Icelandic, Indonesian, and Spanish (and likely others I can't quickly identify). 2601:646:9D01:B930:5F46:8CE1:895D:F4F ( talk) 11:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Yiddish words do not "come from" German. Yiddish and German share a common ancestor, Middle High German, which is not the same thing as contemporary German. For example, לייב/leyb comes from Middle High German lewe, not from contemporary German "Löwe" as was stated in the article. I have substituted Middle High German words as appropriate, but a better solution might be to elide the ancestor words entirely and simply identify the appropriate Yiddish words as being of Germanic origin. Lazarusloafer ( talk) 04:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)