Talk:Pleonasm - Wikiwand

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Archives

Archive 1

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

white snow/green grass

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

Um, read the article, maybe? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 00:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's not in there. --MarSch 09:30, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. This article is FULL of examples, of every sort of pleonasm (that the article covers to date). If you are saying the article doesn't mention "white snow" and "green grass" specifically, no it doesn't. It's an English article, and these phrases would in English be silly constructed "examples"; not all grass is green, nor is all snow white, in the first place, and English speakers don't actually use either phrase under normal circumstances. I could see these phrases being used when they are NOT pleonastic, such as "Look, I found a patch of green grass!" when speaking of a field of otherwise yellow grass. Or, "I wonder if this is the last patch of white snow in the city", in reference to all the rest of the visible snow being a dirty grey. If I'm not addressing your point here, you'll need to make it more clearly. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 22:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

And red snow happens, if a sort of red algae colonize it. And I have seen grass brown and dead plenty of times: see also File:Wildebeest-during-Great-Migration.JPG. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:12, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Underground cave

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

...except "I met him" and "I met up with him" don't describe the same event and therefore isn't the case that it is in fact nearly as uselessly redundant as you think it is to be. To "meet" is more formal than to "meet up" and, since the latter is intransitive, the person being met needs to be in the subject or after a preposition. Now, Southerners with their modal verbs... well, there, you might could have a point. —

Llywelyn II

10:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Legal Pleonasms

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)

I believe that to be folk philology. While IANAL, I have worked for most of my professional life with a big pack of lawyers and have absorbed a lot of definitions, history and lore from them. It has been my direct experiece that at least in the vast majority of cases all of these seemingly redundant phrases are actually composed of individual terms of art in legal writing, with very specific (and different) definitions. For example, "breaking" is the opening of a window, door or other barrier (whether or not anything actually does break in the process), while "entering" is trespass upon an enclosed private property (such as a home, shed or warehouse). If you jimmy a lock and then run away, you are still guilty of the crime of breaking, and if you sneak uninvited into a home the door of which was wide open you are guilty of the crime of entering, but not of both breaking and entering. The longer phrase is so common because most often a burglar does both. Similarly "assault and battery" - assault is the attempt (or in some jurisdicitions even the physically acted out threat, like a pulled punch) to hit some, while battery is actually hitting someone. It is possible to battery someone without assaulting them but by through some other means, such as kicking a chair out from under them. And so on. I don't know about "aiding and abetting" in particular, which I think is used only in things like treason cases (not an area I have any experience in!) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 05:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

An example to consider: "full and complete" combines "full" from the Old English/German "full/voll", plus "complete" from French "complet" with a Latin root. It ensures that Anglo-Saxon and Norman French readers would not be confused by the meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.210.96.176 (talk) 14:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not a folk etymology and there are examples of that but his were both bad ("Aid" and "abet" are both French words; "abetting" is "encouraging") and it is much more common that legal pairs will be subtly different: any and all, hit and run, free and clear... What's more common is that there were such pairs in Old English that got translated into Norman French and vice versa: soc and sac became oyer and terminer. —

Llywelyn II

10:48, 6 February 2016 (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)

It is an interesting topic, but I think it's off-topic for this particular article, other than as it relates to prolixity/logorrhea, and that already seems to be covered pretty well, IMNERHO — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 05:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Deja vu

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)

The edit was fine. I only reverted because there was a bunch of deleted content several edits back. I didn't have a chance to merge in valid subsequent edits. Nohat 08:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right that the French meaning was unnecessary. You're wrong that deja vu all over again is actually pleonasm, despite being a cute attempt in its direction. Deja vu is feeling something happening again; getting deja vu again refers to having experienced that feeling a second time (and the original sensation thrice). —

Llywelyn II

10:51, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Irregardless

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)

Done. Frankly, I thought I'd already done that. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 04:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Over There

"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)

It was just an example, and I think the fact that there's a clear exception already being explained gets the point across. It wasn't meant to be a comprehensive analysis of every possible interpretation. :-) If someone can think of a better example, cool. But the point of the example was "this is generally pleonastic, but look in some contexts it might not be." Mission accomplished. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 04:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Tmesis

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)

Hmm, but I actually say "abso-damned-lutely". so, to me it seems normal. :-) Anecdotal as that may be... — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This is also called infixing, and the infix is frequently an expletive. It will always be inserted before the stressed syllable of the root: "guaran-damn-tee" or "Phila-freakin-delphia". Elprofetrip (talk) 17:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

He understood that. He was disputing the example. I agree that it's probably a minced oath specific to SM'C and should be replaced if it's still in the article; better to use something a little milder than abso-fuckin'-lutely if you can think of one. —

Llywelyn II

10:55, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Off of

"Off of" being primarily American, could we find another example? Stevage 02:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Outside of

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)

Just fix it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it substandard in your dictionary? That's the first I've heard of this. Maybe it's one of those outdated sins, like split infinitives? 178.38.188.105 (talk) 12:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

If it were ever an error, it hasn't been one since the 18th century per the OED. Think it's a personal issue on Mr Bottoms's part. —

Llywelyn II

10:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Reduplication

Removed this:

The very word "reduplication" is an example of such an exception; the self-referential and clearly redundant format of this linguistic neologism was intentional (as surely was the mild humor it invokes.)"

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)

Partially reverted. If a paragraph has problems, fix the problems, don't delete the paragraph. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I should have included in my original comment: the author is also mistaken about this being a redundancy, as this re has the sense of back, rather than again. Let me know if specific citations are needed here; the OED or any English etymological dictionary will suffice. Apologies for not providing the full justification in the initial comment; however, I am again deleting the incorrect material. Bassington 06:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Further comment: saying that this re- is used in the "back" sense here may be an oversimplification; there is a large set of words of similar origin in which re- does not have an unambiguous sense of "back", but definitely does not have the sense of "again". The important points here, though, are:

1. The claim that this is an intentional redundancy is pure speculation, unless the author has some information about the creation of this word in Latin that would substantiate it. If so, that information should be sourced.

2. The claim that this is a redundancy at all is very dubious.

Sorry not to have said all this right at the outset! Bassington 07:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Reiteration? Deipnosophista 17:39, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Proper Nouns

These were also already mentioned [the archive]. — $Llywelyn II$ 11:43, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

"The Al-Qaeda base"

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)

Because the others have names that imply the the larger grouping. Ristorante (individual item) -> restaurant etc. Aside from that the arabic word for military base would often not be "al Qaeda". Stirling Newberry 00:49, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

He means that 'al' is Arabic for 'the', so saying 'the al-Qaeda base' is like saying 'the La Ristorante'. It should then qualify. Daniel (☎) 11:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It probably does qualify, but this is an article with some illustrative examples, not the List of redundant expressions. There are probably hundreds of such examples that could be added, but this is not the place to add them. Also "Al Qaeda" or "Al-Qaeda" is the title of an organization, not simply the words "al" and "qaeda", and Al Qaeda is not properly referred to (in English anyway) as "Qaeda" or "The Qaeda". Compare "Steven King's The Shining" and "The Les Miserables production at the local theatre needs work" — we don't throw out native or foreign definite or indefinite articles when they are parts of titles, even if they conflict with possessives or other articles. This is, basically, why we do say "the La Brea tar pits", and why the Pleonasm article indicates that these are not really pleonastic, just a much more subtle form of redundancy. Personally I think the existing examples are quite sufficient without adding "the Al Qaeda base" just because it is timely and topical. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 22:53, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's helpful to note the use of Arabic al- in some fashion with la. It isn't improper, though. —

Llywelyn II

10:24, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

The La Foreign Word

"We went to the 'Il Ristorante' restaurant."

"The La Brea tar pits are fascinating."

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

It is a proper noun, but the point of the section is that such multi-lingual constructions can internally rendundant: ~~"We hired a mariachi band for the wedding"~~ ⇒ "We hired mariachis for the wedding". The further one gets from understanding of the original meaning and usage of the name or loan word/phrase, the more likely the construction is to become pleonastic. That doesn't make it truly redundant in an actual usage sense, but can lead to quite a lot of underlying tautology, as in Torpenhow Hill. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Rugby

Resolved

– A place name and word derived from a place name even if spelled the same are different linguistic units.

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)

It's neither. Rugby as a word (despite is geonymous origin) is a distinct entity from Rugby as a placename. That it isn't truly redundant is clear a) by tokenizing them ("the A Lions B Football Club" - A and B are not equatable), and b) by recognizing that it's simply a coincidence - there are (according to Rugby) five other places named Rugby; the British place Rugby in question just happened to be where rugby was invented. Point "a" is reinforced when you consider that many things that derive from a place name actually shift in spelling (i.e. it's just further coincidence that the game isn't spelled rugbie). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand:

The term ‘coincidence’ above is a bit misleading, and I don’t think this is as closed a case as it may at first seem.

Of the five ‘other places named Rugby’, one isn’t a place at all and three are unincorporated communities. The remaining Rugby (North Dakota) has a population of less than 5000. For these reasons, none are likely to be the place of origin of the game of rugby, so it’s perhaps not entirely reasonable to state that the British town ‘just happened’ to be the place where rugby was invented!

The name of the game comes from the version of football played in the middle of the19th century at Rugby School in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire. Most English public (i.e. private) schools of the19th century had versions of football that were similar to Rugby’s. For various reasons, Rugby was the only school to give its name to a version of the game. (Another version became soccer, which was based on the kind of game played at Eton and Harrow and a number of other schools.)

I'm afraid I don't understand the reference to shifts in spelling in derivative names; I don't see how that reinforces the point. It looks like a red herring to me, especially as it isn’t the case for Rugby / rugby, which is a well-documented case of a thing deriving from a place name.

So how distinct are rugby the game and Rugby the Warwickshire town? And when Rugby School’s own rugby team play against teams from other schools, is there at least a hint of a pleonasm? I would like to imagine that when the boys at Durham or Sherborne catch sight of the Rugby coach (!), they say something like, “Here comes the Rugby team,” and not, “Here comes the Rugby rugby team.” However, knowing boys as I do, I’d guess they take great delight in exploiting the pleonasm for all it’s worth! Sorchanicneacail (talk) 04:58, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

It is a quasipleonasm in the same quasipleonastic way that "the La Brea tarpits" has. To correct SM'C's example, it isn't actually the A Lions B Football Club: it's the "A Lions B Club", where "B = A Football". Yes, in a perfect world where Wikipedia's Football article defined the word, the "Rugby Rugby Football Club" would be as pleonastic as "American American Football Team"; as it is, "football" tout suite is (even in Rugby) soccer and you've got to specify that it's rugby you're talking about. —

Llywelyn II

11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

I was born in Rugby. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:15, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

So? —

Llywelyn II

11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Bloody Yogi Berra

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)

Actually Berra is a lot more famous these days for Yogiisms than for baseball (except among baseball history afficionados, of course). The point that more quotes would help is a good one though. As for irony, there are more than one kind of irony. I do think we certainly want to avoid the "Alanis Morrisette error" of mistaking inconvenient coincidence for irony, and the even more common one of mistaking sarcasm for irony. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

@VonBlade Irony being a meaning unintended by the author

So ironic remarks are ones whose irony is not visible to the speaker? Interesting. Then "unintended irony" is redundant when it's not wrong.

I did a Google n-grams on these two terms (ironic remark, unintended irony) and the usage of both has greatly increased during the 20th century. Particularly illuminating is a comparison between "ironic remark" and "sarcastic remark", which shows that the latter is much older. So it is possible that your distinction reflects an earlier stage of usage. 178.38.189.183 (talk) 12:31, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

This is fantastic

Resolved

– Just a chat.

I just read this article and I have to congratulate however wrote this line of pure poetry:

Although such usage may be favored in certain contexts, it may also be disfavored when used gratuitously to portray false erudition, obfuscate, or otherwise introduce unnecessary verbiage.

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, myself, have inferrentially absorbed the concept that another editor, namely the Oskar Sigvardsson to whom I am responding, raises concerns that the content of the article to which this discussion and debate forum pertains could potentially be advertising the necessity of its receiving some judicious editorial attention. ;-) Have at it! It does need some work, that's for sure. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I meant it, I think the sentence is stellar! It's a delightful little bit of encyclopedic irony, I want it to stay! --Oskar 07:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I know I'm late to this but it absolutely should stay. It's glorious. VonBlade 22:45, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Orwell would kill you. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:33, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Someone mangled the comma use and turned it into British English, but it's otherwise still here and still appreciated. —

Llywelyn II

11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Unfocused

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

Get started sourcing. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:23, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if psalm example is valid

Resolved

– Doesn't conflict with definition of pleonasm in article.

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)

I don't think the article says that the redundancy must be 100% for it to be considered pleonastic. So this would still be a pleonasm, since it could be rewritten so say "O LORD, many foes are rising against me", with no loss of meaning, but considerable loss of poetic value. (Remember that the article says that pleonasm is often a literary virtue). As the article also says, Psalms has many other examples, so if you don't like this one, just replace it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure about this? "O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me" -- the 'many' are not 'many foes' but rather 'many persons' who by rising against him become his foes. 68.101.213.100 (talk) 18:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I checked the Hebrew of the Psalm, and the first 'many' is a verb: 'they are many'. The second 'many' is (arguably) a noun: 'many people'. I think that's interesting. I don't think the Hebrew suggests that by rising against him they become his foes; in Hebrew 'many people' can be read in apposition to 'rising', something like: "many people, rising people; against me." But I'm not sure a more nuanced translation of the Hebrew makes for a better example of pleonasm in English.

I'm also curious about the value of including examples from non-current English. After all, English already has plenty of geographical variations, so introducing historical variations as well could get thorny! I don't know anyone who says, in everyday life, "How many are my foes!" But on the other hand I think there's considerable value in including poetic examples, and the poetry of biblical versions has been rather influential on the English language. Ultimately I agree that the Psalm example is valid, but with the caveat that ancient poetry in translation doesn't always yield its meaning readily, and its grammar and syntax may be yet more difficult! Sorchanicneacail (talk) 05:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid everyone here is missing the point. The pattern of "repetition" to which the author is referring is not characteristic of Biblical prose. It is the defining structure of Biblical prosody, found in Psalms, of course, and also in the frequent quotations from song and poetry scattered throughout the Biblical prose narrative: "Saul has killed his thousands [of Philistines], and David his tens of thousands!" The two half of the lines are not synonyms--you may recall that when Saul heard the Israelite women singing this, he became murderously angry. It's the non-synonymy that advances the argument, here and throughout Biblical poetry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.175.191 (talk) 22:21, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Is the example using "erotically" spurious?

Resolved

– Fixed with a rewrite.

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)

That doesn't seem to be the point of the passage; it wasn't about what is correct according to dictionaries, but about perceptions in American English. I've rewritten it to address the issue, and several other problems, and based the rewrite on OED research. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure 'erotically' looks right to Brits either. (For the record, I'm both British and North American.) Maybe we're all too repressed! I think the word 'erotic' presents some special problems. Look, for example, at the difficulty with translating the title of Georges Bataille's book Erotisme. 'Erotism' looks wrong; 'Eroticism' looks and sounds (and is - in Bataille's terms) wrong. I think we need to recast all sentences so that we use 'erotic', at least for another decade.Sorchanicneacail (talk) 05:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Erotism is "wrong", pending a strong push to introduce it on its own merits. "Eroticism" is fine for a belief in or support of the erotic; belief in or support of Eros would be Erosism if it were coined in modern English. —

Llywelyn II

11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

HEADLINE ASSAULTS AREA MAN

Resolved

– Needed change made.

Halfway through the "Subtler redundancies" section, the following exmaples appear:

"The sound of the loud music drowned out the sound of the burglary."
"The loud music drowned out the sound of the burglary."
"The music drowned out the burglary."

Then this paragraph follows:

The reader or hearer does not have to be told that loud music has a sound, and in a newspaper headline or other abbreviated prose can even be counted upon to infer that "the burglary" is a proxy for "the sound of the burglary" and that the music necessarily must have been loud to drown it out. Many are critical of the excessively abbreviated constructions of "headline-itis" or "newsspeak", so "loud [music]" and "sound of the [burglary]" in the above example should probably not be properly regarded as pleonastic or otherwise genuinely redundant, but simply as informative and clarifying.

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)

At first I wasn't sure what your point was, since the article nowhere specified what a headline actually would or would not have said. But I think that my changing 'infer that "the burglary" is a proxy for "the sound of the burglary"' to 'infer that "burglary" is a proxy for "sound of the burglary"' fixes it. The verb tense issue doesn't seem germane. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Shortening Shakespeare

Resolved

– Just a comment.

The "Other forms" section ends thusly:

"...[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself."—Franklin D. Roosevelt, "First Inaugural Address", March 1933.
"With eager feeding[,] food doth choke the feeder."—William Shakespeare, Richard II (play), II, i, 37.
As with cognate objects, these constructions are not redundant because the repeated words or derivatives cannot be removed without removing meaning or even destroying the sentence, though in most cases they could be replaced with non-related synonyms at the cost of style (e.g., compare "The only thing we have to fear is terror".)

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:

"Eager feeding will choke the feeder." (Food is implied)
"The glutton with his food soon chokes himself." (Complete rewrite but essentially equivalent) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morenus (talk • contribs) 18:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew and Yiddish influences

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.

You misunderstood the (original) passage; it said that -shm reduplication was from Yiddish, and infixing from Hebrew, not the other way around and not both. I don't mind the Hebrew assertion being deleted, since (aside from the fact that I think Arabic is more likely) it wasn't sourced, and some linguists would agree while others would not, so unless and until multiple sources are compared and contrasted and some theory of the origin of infixing in English is sourceable as at least generally accepted, it shouldn't be in the article. Such infixing is certainly not a native feature of English; nor of other Germanic languages, nor of Romance languages like French and Latin, nor of Greek, the three main sources of what has become English, so it had to come from somewhere - morphological (word-structure) changes at a level that basic simply do not magically appear in a language all of a sudden. Hebrew or more likely (see below) Arabic are certainly the most likely sources, being the only major languages in proximity to Europe to use infixing as a basic word-building feature. The Hebrew theory is reasonable, due to the large influx of Jews into Europe during the middle ages, before Yiddish even developed. I think a stronger theory is that it comes from Arabic, and entered English via sailors and merchants whose usual route was Britain to the Middle East and back again, in precisely the same way that most of the Italian and Portuguese and (before American westward expansion into Spanish/Mexican territory) Spanish words that have been borrowed into English were borrowed. Trade is the number one vector for loan words, by a wide margin. (However, proponents of the Hebrew theory would point out that Jews have been heavily involved in commerce in Europe since their arrival.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:27, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist please

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)

mutatis mutandis example

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)

Orwell used it a lot. While not notable in itself, and I think rather an affectation (he hated i.e. and e.g.), I wonder if that's worth pointing out if someone is digging for quotes. Best to find in the Collected Essays. If I can remember specific example I will write back here-- I think perhaps he wrote on pacifism as mutatis mutandis fascism (grammar all wrong there I am just being brief). SimonTrew (talk) 14:25, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Except "the changes having been made" is an ablative absolute and not actually a pleonasm. Both words are essential and neither is included in the other. —

Llywelyn II

10:19, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Merger: Prolixity, Wordiness, Pleonasm, Tautology_(rhetoric) and Redundancy_(language)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was a mess. Please only discuss one merge at a time. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 03:46, 27 February 2012 (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)

Wordiness, created today, should probably be merged too. Gonzonoir (talk) 14:02, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that both should be merged into Pleonasm. Iceblock (talk) 14:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Wordiness should be merged. In that article I have added a couple of references and a few other terms, though the list of course could be endless. A good merge into a section would be good (if it deserves a section of its own) and keep the redirect "wordy" which had not existed (I just made it) which currently goes to "wordiness" but should go to "prolixity" of course if merged. SimonTrew (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Wordy by the way was a puppet character in BBC's Look and Read.^[1] It was voiced by Charles Collingwood.

I am also going to list "usage" as prolix. What's wrong with "use"? WP is littered with "usage", that doesn't make it right. I've refrained from changing them here cos it's a talk page. SimonTrew (talk) 14:53, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Tautology: What's the difference between a pleonasm and a linguistic tautology?--Arado 23:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

My quickie definitions:

* Redundancy (in the context of rhetoric): the use of unneeded verbiage that is either duplicative, useless, or even worse-than-useless, on any scale.

* Pleonasm, a subset of redundancy: the use of more verbiage than is necessary to communicate the point

* Tautology, a subset of pleonasm: saying essentially the same thing twice in different words

* Logorrhea/prolixity, a subset of pleonasm: using extra verbiage simply to be longwinded or for obfuscatory purposes

* Oxymoron, a subset or outgrowth or side effect of pleonasm: self-contradiction through the use of unneeded verbiage

* Repetition (in the broad sense, of substantial passages/expositions, not just words), a subset of redundancy: Repeating oneself in excess (whether in the same or different terms), to hammer home a point, get attention, or various other reasons. An extreme example (which is also a logic fallacy) would be recycling an entire argument without substantial change in response to an argument one is unable to defend against in hopes that the re-presentation of the stale argument will be mistaken for an actual defense. This is very, very common in politics, but isn't pleonasm; it's something much broader. By "repetition" here (there may be a more precise rhetorical term for what I'm talking about), I mean a little kid asking 5 times in 5 minutes, "Are we there yet?!" to get attention and express frustration, or Martin Luther King Jr. laying it on thick with, "Free at last! Free at last!". This isn't pleonasm, it's simply rhetorical repetition. The redundant Bible quotes in the pleonasm article probably don't really belong there. The Bible likes to repeat itself a lot, so I'm sure there are great pleonasm examples in it that aren't the wholesale repetition of sentences for rhetorical effect like the extant examples are.

I don't know how well accepted these definitions would be - some might say that oxymora are not a form of redundancy and ergo not really related to pleonasm.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 04:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The statement in the first paragraph is misleading. My only knowledge of these terms come from our articles, but it is immediately apparent that a semantic pleonasm could be equivalent to a rhetorical tautology, but to say that a pleonasm is equivalent to a tautology is definitely incorrect. --[anon.]

Yeah, it was a problem. I think I've addressed it adequately. Someone slapped in something like "And another term for this is tautology (rhetoric)", which led to this problem. Another aspect of the problem is that the rhetorical tautology article is poorly written and is actually mostly talking about pleonasm. I may try to work on them both in tandem or something. I also just overhauled the redundancy (language) page which was just a rather useless stub that mostly talked about pleonasm and RAS syndrome, to the extent that it really talked about anything. I think it now summarizes all of these sometimes overlapping terms a bit better. I think this whole family of articles could benefit from directly quoting definitions and differentiation from some rhetoric textbooks, but I don't happen to have one handy. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 04:53, 5 July 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)

Mighty irony that the meaty template layer now atop this article appears to suffer, grotesquely, from that disease it purports to cure: prolixity, wordiness, etc:) Surgery called for to excise this embarrassing carbuncle! Wingspeed (talk) 12:31, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[1]
Look and Read, BBC, retrieved 2009-05-02

Tuna

Note that this subject has also been discussed in the archive. — $Llywelyn II$ 11:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

"Tuna fish"

"Tuna fish" is also used in the UK.--Greg K Nicholson 02:28:57, 2005-08-09 (UTC)

I'm not sure that tuna fish is a good example. The author interprets it as "Tuna, (which is [redundantly] a fish)". However, it appears to me to be adjectival: "Fish ([not-redundantly] of the Tuna variety")". Considering further, on the one hand, to say "a salmon fish sandwich" is absurd, but on the other, [at least in the UK], it is usually not referred to as "A tuna sandwich". I think that the author is technically correct, but that an anomaly of UK spoken English renders the example less effective. --81.187.40.226

The apparent Brit writing just before you said that the British also use the phrase "tuna fish", so I think your unfamiliarity with it is perhaps even more dialectal than US vs. UK English. I'm hard pressed to come up with a better example - "tuna fish" really IS very common in at least North American English, and serves as a good example, in the passage it is in (the point of which was that although "tuna fish" is *technically* not pleonastic in general usage, because at least some of us might be eating both tuna fish and tuna fruit as suited our whim, to most English speakers the phrase effectively is pleonastic, because we don't eat many prickly pears.) As an aside, if you said "I caught a tuna fish while sailing in the Atlantic" the usage would absolutely be pleonastic, since cacti don't grow in the ocean. :-) As for the adjectival issue, I think that's a stretch in this case. In a case where someone had, say, used the scientific name, or the common name of the fish was not actually commonly known at all, I could perhaps see your point. The article really already covers this though, just not with such a constructed example. I explains clearly that a phrase can be considered pleonastic or nonpleonastic depending on a variety of conditions, one of the main ones being prior information. I might have to say "I just ate a really good loach fish" to a someone from the Gobi desert, but I won't have to say that to a fisherman or an aquarist; and see the "ocean cactus" issue above - if I were speaking to someone who knew nothing at all about the sea and what lives in it, such as very small child, "tuna fish" might not be pleonastic in the context. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 04:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm from the UK, and I don't doubt that there are people in the UK that say "tuna fish" in reference to the foodstuff. However, I am of a younger generation and, perhaps due to where I am in the country (which is the south-west, but my parents are northern), I was brought up to describe the fish and its 'meat' as "tuna". I have always referred to it as "tuna" and "a tuna sandwich", as do most of the people I know. One such friend, however, is fairly easily influenced by television and watches a lot of American television. She has recently taken to saying "tuna fish" in reference to the foodstuff, which we (or I, at least) would probably, if asked, consider to be an anomaly. I would argue that, in my personal opinion, "tuna fish" is pleonastic, but as this page proves, it's a moot point. But I'm a vegetarian, so if you're offering me a sandwich, I'll take cheese. :) ---Chris (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: The construction "tuna fish" does have a disambiguating merit in that users of the phrase are often referring specifically to the tuna that comes in cans and is used as lunchmeat or in tuna salad. This differs from "tuna" which normally refers to the non-processed form of the fish, such as in "tuna steaks" or "tuna filets.":

I keep reverting this edit because it is unsourced and just a non-encyclopedic opinion until it can be sourced (that it is an opinion and not an undeniable fact is clear, since I happen to disagree and have a widely differing opinion; QED). It isn't enough that point #3 in that section, about disambiguation, might apply. I could also say "we say 'tuna fish' because it differentiates 'tuna fish caught by oneself with a hook' from 'tuna bought at market, fresh or canned'; aside from the fact that this hypothetical assertion would contradict the previous assertion, in the absence of evidence to support such an assertion, it is non-encyclopedic opinion a.k.a. "original research". PS: That point aside, I have to frankly just disagree with the assertion in the first place. Even in American English which the article alleges (incorrectly, according to some UK respondents here and at Talk:List of redundant expressions) is exclusively where one finds the "tuna fish" construction, I (a native American English speaker, who has lived in most major regions of the country, with the exception of the central North) have never seen any evidence of the distinction the above re-reverted edit is trying to draw. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

A pun from the unix world: "You can tune a file system, but you can’t tune a fish." (See e.g. http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=8&topic=tunefs.) 70.111.91.127 (talk) 05:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Hats off to you, sir/madam. (Delete as appropriate. No seriously, it's a wiki.) ---Chris (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Relocated from User talk:SMcCandlish because it is about this article's (and Tuna's) content. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)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)

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but I have to dispute this as insufficient sourcing. At this point, I'm more interested in this because of the alleged distinction being included at the Tuna article, too (where I'll also raise this issue) than as an example at Pleonasm in a section that is about 90% original research anyway. I'm not sure it's all that useful an example of anything because, while not ultra-rare, it is a sporadically occurring colloquialism, and more importantly because (as I show below) there's hints that people who sometimes use "tuna fish" do not do so consistently, and even more evidence that some of those who do use it, use it in reference to the live animal ("also", or "only" isn't clear). If it's taken this long to find even one dictionary-type source at all, that's obvious evidence far from universal. It may not even be common any longer except perhaps among subsets of people. (But is it an age bracket? People from land-locked areas? Posts above indicate it has nothing to do with US vs. UK English, and everyone at least recognizes the phrase, or the Unix joke above wouldn't work). I'm 43, I've lived in three English-speaking countries and five US states on both coasts and in the middle away from water, and I've never seen or heard anyone clearly make this distinction. The best I can confirm anecdotally is that I have heard people say "tunafish" (it always sounded like one word when I heard it), and as far as I can recall it was always in reference to food, including cat food, but it was always (AFAICR) in the [American] South and Southwest, far from anywhere there would be live tuna to refer to, so that could easily be false correlation.

"Tuna" without "fish" is used in both food and live-animal cases in every tuna-related context I can find, from canned fish (smoking gun evidence opportunity - find even one brand that says "tuna fish"!), to mixed products containing tuna, to fishing charter sites, to sea life sites, and so on. I cannot find a single tuna-bearing product that says it has "tuna fish" in it, not even cat food.

Interestingly, I did find "All About Tuna Fish", a self-published pet food FAQ, but the name of the document is actually "all_about_tuna.PDF", without "fish", so even some people who use "tuna fish", and use it in reference to food do so inconsistently. While it's just one document, it's worth looking at. It veers all over the place between "tuna" and "tuna fish", including "canned tuna" without the "fish".

More importantly, here is "tuna fish" in reference to the live animal (it turned up when I Googled "all about tuna fish" to find the above PDF again). I decided to just Google "tuna fish" without quotes: Some of the front-page results are for the live fish, including all four of the top image results, and the top YouTube result. Googling that phrase with quotation marks around it to limit the results more sharply still produced the same outcome.

The upshot being I think there's not enough evidence that "tuna fish" is used consistently in any particular dialect, register, age bracket, context, or any other definable subset at all (and we have no source that it does), much less only to mean food, even less only to mean canned food, even if this might once have been true enough to be reported in one (and only one?) dictionary as a predicable distinction. Google turns up lots of evidence to the contrary. I.e., the one dictionary source is demonstrably not reliable in this case (probably because of limited data collection combined with age). The only conclusion that I can come to is that "tuna fish" is today like "puppy dog", "kitty cat", "pick-up truck" and "taxi cab" – it's just something pleonastic that some people say and others don't. "Puppy dog" and "kitty cat", originating from pleonasm applied to "puppy" and "kitten", are similarly inconsistent, in that people who use these phrases do not always use them, and do not reliably use them to only refer to something specific (here, juvenile pets - the terms are often applied to adult animals, just as we see "tuna fish" being applied to the fish as animals instead of food). With regard to your having added "tuna fish" and the same source to the Tuna article, where I've also disputed it (and removed the dialectal claim, since the source doesn't support it), I have to note that neither the Dog nor Cat articles mention "puppy dog" and "kitty cat".

Using "tuna fish" as an example of standard English idiom like "safe haven" pushes the issue even farther, and it isn't supported by the dictionary source, even if that source were reliable on this and we didn't have evidence of wildly inconsistent usage. The phrase survives at all only because older family members, who picked it up from even older ones (back to ca. 1881, when the word entered English from Spanish, according to the dictionary) from inland areas not used to various kinds of fish being readily available in the olden days, have passed it on to current generations, who move around in motor vehicles and thus make it hard to pinpoint exactly where it started. It's just like "tin foil" for "aluminum foil" (I say "tin foil" all the time myself for this got-it-from-the-parents reason, even though it was supplanted by aluminum foil before I was born). It's an unconscious language habit that will die off. While I have no doubt that some individuals, even entire families of them, actually do limit the phrase to canned tuna, well, so what? That's not encyclopedic, even if an outdated dictionary also records the bare fact that the usage exists, but provides no context for that observation.

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The "tuna fish" thing has always struck me as being rather odd. Canned sardines or herring or salmon aren't called "sardine fish" or "herring fish" or "salmon fish". And the usage is inconsistent. I might call a cold sandwich a "tuna fish" sandwhich, but when heated with cheese it's a "tuna melt", not a "tuna fish melt". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:00, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

EO doesn't quite come out and say it, but I might infer that "tuna" was originally more of an adjective, and then it would make sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

We don't have any evidence of this though; the sources say English borrowed it from Spanish, and it's a noun in Spanish, too. A more likely explanation, following etymologies and cross references in Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), is that it's an alteration of "tunnyfish". "Tunny", from French thun instead of Spanish tuna and atún, modified with the -y diminutive suffix of English, was an alternative name of tuna in English, and has also been recorded as "tunnyfish". The source stops there and my hypothesis begins here. It's easy to see that application of the -y diminutive to the noun t[h]un created a word, tunny, in the form of an adjective, that naturally lead fishermen and wharf shoppers and so on to use it as such, thus tunny fish or tunnyfish. When, through the influence of Spanish, usage shifted away from tunny to tuna, this would have shifted tunnyfish to tunafish even though tuna would not have been naturally parsed by English speakers as an adjective on its own. By the time canned food became a major staple in inland areas, tunny/tunnyfish were already obsolete. This would also explain why (as links I provided earlier demonstrate) "tunafish" is still used in reference to the actual live fish here and there; it always was in Modern English, originally as tunnyfish, it's just that "landlubbers" didn't know this, only being exposed to canned tuna until after the era of powered flight made fresh fish, labeled simply "tuna", available in inland areas. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Vaguely similar, in German the words Hai and Haifisch are both used to mean "shark". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:05, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Fine by me, I have no strong feelings about the matter. Since I am aware of the usage, I went to go see if I could find a citation. I found one, so I added it. If consensus is that the citation isn't reliable (although I think you'd be hard pressed to make that claim about M-W) it should certainly be removed. Now, if the argument is that it's not "universal" usage, go ahead and make a note, but I don't think it's fair to say that a respected dictionary isn't a valid source for citation. Here are some additional internet discussions on the issue. I haven't thoroughly mined them for references to reliable sources, but they might be useful. . Also, it looks like the American Heritage Dictionary agrees with Merriam-Webster. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I have nothing against M-W (I even cite them again, above). But M-W, like all dictionaries, is a collection of work by a large number of people, some more conscientious than others, fed through the maw of an overworked editorial staff, then finally published many years after its data was originally gathered. The M-W citation doesn't actually provide any information other than that a lexicographer recorded the usage; it tells us nothing about the region, dialect, register, time period, speaker demographics, or other context in which that usage was recorded. It's not that M-W isn't generally reliable, it's that I've already demonstrated with URLs to actual cases of current usage that M-W's assumptions about the usage (applying just to canned food) are no longer correct, even if they were at one time (dubious). I'm not disputing that the usage exists, I'm disputing the idea that sources demonstrate that it is or isn't pleonastic, for purposes of this article, and that it isn't an unencyclopedic curiosity with usage far too inconsistent, for purposes of both this article and the Tuna article. I don't think it's a useful entry at this article, because some subset of the time the speaker does mean canned tuna only while at other times this isn't a safe assumption. I think it's possibly worth mentioning as an alternative term at the tuna article, but without editorializing as to usage and meaning distinctions. (PS: If dictionaries were never wrong, there would only need to be one dictionary per language. For some background on just how political and opinional lexicography can be, see the history of the American Heritage Dictionary, which was specifically created to contradict the "liberal" M-W Third, and the history of Daniel Webster's dictionary, which was created for the similar political purpose of divorcing revolutionary Americans' English from the British variety as much as possible. These goals would not even be conceivable if dictionary definitions were neutral reportage of bare facts.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

How about just removing the "tuna" portion(s) of this article entirely? Surely there are better non-controversial examples of pleonams? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Where I come from (New York), "tuna fish" is an exceedingly common locution among all age groups and educational levels. Demanding a citation for it is like demanding a citation for saying "the sky is blue." (Maybe I shouldn't give anyone any ideas.) Kostaki mou (talk) 02:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

"tuna" is not the only example of this. Cod is also referred to as "codfish", and garfish is also known as "gar" (as Chambers confirms). Deipnosophista (talk) 17:34, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm removing the "disputed" tag:

There is no dispute here as to whether or not "tuna" is a noun on its own. It is and, if there are faults with Merriam-Webster and Webster's, here's the OED entry.
English nouns are frequently used attributively (i.e., as adjectives). Not all are, but this one certainly is.
The concept of "fish" is implicit in that of "tuna" and therefore—regardless of any previous etymological history w/r/t "tunnyfish"—the modern use of "tuna fish" is a pleonasm.
It is a very common, popular, and helpful pleonasm, as noted by many editors above and through the history of the page, which has used "tuna fish" as an example for over ten years. It is also a frequent example in books mentioning the subject.
The two editors above disputing the point have not convinced their fellows and have entirely unconvincing arguments logically. @81...: The entire point of the pleonasm "tuna fish" is to emphasize the "fish" aspect but that does not make the word "fish" any less logically unnecessary. @Dante: The OED backs up that "tuna fish" is used in reference to the meat of the tuna as a foodstuff. That doesn't make it any less pleonastic. The concept of "meat" is not implicit in "tuna", but "fish" certainly is until such time as another meaning of "tuna" renders it ambiguous. — $Llywelyn II$ 08:23, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tuna: a prickly example

Resolved

– Fixed.

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

The article already makes that distinction. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

And for what it's worth, not commonly at all. —

Llywelyn II

10:16, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Suggest removing Milton example

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)

Absolutely agree that other editors should weigh in here on this particular issue.

Narsil may have some strong arguments for removal, but here are mine for keeping, nonetheless. The term pleonasm is "rather obscure" and requires a full discussion within the article for the benefit of the reader with "little or no knowledge of the subject", in order to gain that knowledge and understanding. Among the things to be discussed, for the purpose of letting readers make up their own minds, are "pleonasms that might not be pleonasms". The Milton example is a perfect example of the case. To me, it's a cautionary entry that reminds me to question my own assumptions before I run off and accuse "wordy editor of being wordy" or "redundant editor of being redundant" right here on Wikipedia.

Essays such as "WP:TLDR" will rely on articles like this to give a more full explanation of why we write concisely in an encyclopedia, but not necessarily when we write literature. The contrast is important, especially when one can find 6,000 word plot summaries for TV episodes in this encyclopedia. My own interest in understanding the concept of pleonasm as elucidated by Wikipedia comes from the article "RAS syndrome", a writing and speaking style that annoys not only me, I'm sure.

I think the example should be kept, because it enhances my own, and I believe others, understanding of what the concept is, and what it might not be when we have to make editorial judgments right here on Wikipedia about what to keep and what to remove in other articles here, especially in the scope of articles on fictional subjects, where some editors seem to think they've been given a license to expand dramatically on a concept without considering the actual utility of the encyclopedia they are writing for.

Giving fair mention to all sides of the issue in this article is, as I understand it, appropriate within the WP:NPOV policy for a well written article. I still don't know if Milton was being pleonastic or not. But I have some education on the issue now, and am able to consider the debate in future decisions. I could not do that so easily were the example removed.

For these reasons, I think the entry should be kept. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 04:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Response to Third Opinion Request:

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)

Concede – 1) I buy the argument "an ambiguous example is not an example of ambiguity". 2) I buy the argument that other examples in the article suffice. Thank you for a well-thought-out opinion. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 02:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome and kudos to the folks involved in this dispute for their thoughtful good faith. Regards. TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 18:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It's fine that the consensus was that the language was too archaic to be helpful to readers but I'll just note that the objection was otherwise poorly taken: hence has the single meaning "from here / from this point" (variously used of place, time, and argument) and the OED and other sources specifically note that the use of "from hence" amounts to a pleonasm (with redundant from). "From hence" was formerly a common expression and my own feeling is that Milton is famous enough (and that passage is important enough) that we should've kept it among the other examples to class up the joint. —

Llywelyn II

10:14, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Article issues

English "it is..."

Pleonastic "It"

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)

Idiomatic expressions

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)

"It Rains" vs. "Rains."

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 agree; it's a poor example. But can you think of such a verb? ;) Actually, it's only necessary to find a verb DISTINCT from its noun form in the proper case & voice for use here. Steve8394 (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Except it's a misguided endeavor. Not omitting or eliding subjects is never a pleonasm in English, even though they might qualify in, e.g., Latin or Chinese. Even in cases like "sucks" where slang has made the terse form more common, it's understood as a contraction and "it [sc., the situation] sucks" is simply correct, not pleonastic or overstated. —

Llywelyn II

09:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Surely you can omit the object and the auxiliary in the present continuous; e.g. "I'm Coming" >> "Coming"? Calorus (talk) 11:18, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to replace it with "It's raining", which seems to be better, anyway. Unless someone complains in the next couple of hours. TomS TDotO (talk) 12:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Two days' time

May be possible

German grammar

Shellshock

Redundant pleonasm

"Redundant pleonasm" - poor example for introductory paragraph

Resolved

– Fixed.

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)

Article text no longer uses a silly example like that, as of this writing. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Just commentary, not advocacy. Isn't there often some sort of silly example in introductory lessons on topics like this? Maybe not one so exactly recursive; I can see where that might be too much of a winky personality for a Wikipedia article. But, doesn't a silly example like this also help drive the point home, at least at the introductory level. A built-in ah-ha. It is a bit reductive though, and a reader who doesn't go any further might walk away thinking pleonasm is equal to redundancy, which it is not. erie lhonan 02:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Pleonasm is precisely redundancy in expression, so as long as the article marked as a concerning a rhetorical device they're synonymous. —

Llywelyn II

09:38, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Is "redundant and pleonastic" truly pleonastic? (dubious)

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

Subsumption of one term by the other is a necessary component of pleonasm, not a refutation of it. —

Llywelyn II

09:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Publical does appear in the OED It's Just Obsolete

openly outspoken

Safe haven

WP:ENGVAR

overt subject

Proposed merge with Tautology (rhetoric)

French pleonasm

incorrect reasoning under "Other forms" section

Semantic pleonasm, "every mother's child", and Shakespeare

Usage section citations

@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)

@Fabrickator: thanks for watching out for referencing on this article, as well as what appeared to you to be incorrect editor behavior wrt foreign sources. Fyi, I am the last person to be dismissive of a source based on its language—have you seen my user page, or the references I add to articles, or my numerous translations from a slew of languages, or these two discussions? (As it happens, I'm also slowly learning Korean; it's very tough going compared to my other languages, and though I am familiar with Hangul now, I'm not past ko-0 yet and won't be for some time, so no point adding it to my Babel list). Maybe a missing comma is to blame; would "one, poor reference, 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)

"The Al-Qaeda base"

The La Foreign Word

Rugby

"Tuna fish"

Tuna: a prickly example

Pleonastic "It"

Idiomatic expressions

"It Rains" vs. "Rains."

"Redundant pleonasm" - poor example for introductory paragraph

Is "redundant and pleonastic" truly pleonastic? (dubious)

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