Talk:Pleonasm

message: 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)
: As it hit over 60K again, I've moved stagnant discussions to the archive page again.  People may wish to note that some of the more heated (to some "interesting", to others "annoying") discussions are now in the archive.  Some of them were also quite long.  So, basically, if you just discovered this article and are somehow fascinated by its history, the "meat" is in the archive page.  — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 05:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive 

message: 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)
replies: text: Well, it's not in there. --MarSch 09:30, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  white snow/green grass 

message: 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. — LlywelynII 10:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Underground cave

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text:  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:  became . — LlywelynII 10:48, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Legal Pleonasms 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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). — LlywelynII 10:51, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Deja vu

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

message: "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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Over There

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 10:55, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Tmesis

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

message: 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)
replies: text: Just fix it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 10:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outside of 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: I think it's helpful to note the use of Arabic al- in some fashion with la. It isn't improper, though. — LlywelynII 10:24, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: "The Al-Qaeda base"

message: :"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)
thread_title: The La Foreign Word

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: I know I'm late to this but it absolutely should stay. It's glorious. VonBlade 22:45, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Orwell would kill you. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 00:33, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone mangled the comma use and turned it into British English, but it's otherwise still here and still appreciated. — LlywelynII 11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is fantastic 

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 11:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the example using "erotically" spurious? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  HEADLINE ASSAULTS AREA MAN 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Shortening Shakespeare 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Hebrew and Yiddish influences 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Watchlist please 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 10:19, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  mutatis mutandis example 

message: 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(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 17:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And for what it's worth, not commonly at all. — LlywelynII 10:16, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tuna: a prickly example

message: 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.  — ækTalk 11:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for helping.  You might be interested in WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH.  It's just that it looks to me in my browser like you're using non-breaking spaces on em dashes that are never spaced in the first place.  Then again, if any editor bothered to use the entities rather the characters for the various horizontal lines so that other editors could tell whether they're "doing it right" or not, I'd probably fall out of my chair.  —Aladdin Sane (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, you're right.  The dashes were spaced in the text as I found it, so I added nbsp's assuming they were en-dashes (it's impossible to tell in the monospaced edit-box font).  However, on further examination I see that there is a mix of en- and em-dashes in the article.  As I go, I'll fix the spacing up and convert all the dashes to one style or the other.  My personal preference is spaced en-dashes, but it looks like the article uses mostly em-dashes, so I'll probably just use those (unspaced, of course).  — ækTalk 19:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article issues 

message: ===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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 09:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: English "it is..."

message: 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)
thread_title: Pleonastic "It"

message: 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)
thread_title:  Idiomatic expressions 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 09:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  "It Rains" vs. "Rains." 

message: 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)
replies: text: This to me is the same pleonasm as "it was red in color"; a popular prolix of newscasters attempting to extend their camera time. Same category as "a squealing noise" or "the current time is" (doubly so).Steve8394 (talk) 23:13, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

text: Well it is a pleonasm and could be included but it's so often used because pleonasm is a rhetorical device, not an error. "In five minute's time" is more formal than "in five minutes" and has a subtly different emphasis. It specifically references "by the end of this span of time". Someone told their phone will be repaired "in about five minutes" might reasonably bother the shopkeeper in three or four minutes; someone told "in five minutes" shouldn't; and someone told "in five minutes' time" really shouldn't. — LlywelynII 10:05, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It is possible to say "five minutes' distant" - "how far is the store?".   TomS TDotO (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Two days' time

message: :'When expressing possibility, English speakers use pleonastic expressions such as: It may be possible or maybe it's possible, where both terms (verb may/adverb maybe and adjective possible have the same meaning)'
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)
replies: text: I agree with you on this. I call for its removal. P g chris (talk) 01:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Expanding upon or clarifying Ryan Wise's response: It is sometimes necessary to discuss whether a certain thing is possible or not, and the sentences described are certainly used for that. It may also be possible to use such a construction pleonastically, but I'm not sure. (See what I did there? :) ) TooManyFingers (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: May be possible

message: 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)
replies: text: PTSD does have a different meaning from CSR, but CSR isn't shell shock. CSR replaced shell shock as an official diagnosis but changed its purview at the same time. The shell shock suffered during the Great War may refer to CSR, PTSD, or various other problems: the terminology wasn't pinned down precisely, which is exactly why it ceased to be used as a diagnostic term. — LlywelynII 09:42, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Shellshock

message: === "Redundant pleonasm" - poor example for introductory paragraph ===
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. -- , 11:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Article text no longer uses a silly example like that, as of this writing. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 17:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: 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.  erielhonan 02:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 09:38, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

text: Subsumption of one term by the other is a necessary component of pleonasm, not a refutation of it. — LlywelynII 09:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Redundant pleonasm

message: 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. -- , 11:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Article text no longer uses a silly example like that, as of this writing. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 17:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: 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.  erielhonan 02:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. — LlywelynII 09:38, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Redundant pleonasm" - poor example for introductory paragraph 

message: 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)
replies: text: Subsumption of one term by the other is a necessary component of pleonasm, not a refutation of it. — LlywelynII 09:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is "redundant and pleonastic" truly pleonastic? (dubious) 

message: 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)
replies: text: In answer to your question, yes, it is. In answer to your point regarding the etymology of 'haven', it's entirely tendentious. It would only be convincing in Old English, in which case one would be discussing 'haeuene' &c. and some other word since safe is a 15th century borrowing from French. The phrase was originally a disambiguation but it simply isn't in modern English. 'Haven' primarily means "a refuge or place of safety". — LlywelynII 08:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Safe haven 

message: 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)
thread_title: [[WP:ENGVAR]]

message: 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)
thread_title:  overt subject 

message: 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)
replies: text: Last merge attempt failed. What's different about this one? Are we just going to propose a merge every year? El_C 06:13, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

text: Boldly, no A pleonasm is a literary device. A tautology is a form of circular reasoning. They are two distinct concepts and should not be merged into one article simply because a certain interpretation of the definition can make both fit to the "same definition". 198.84.253.202 (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge with [[Tautology (rhetoric)]] 

message: 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)
replies: text: Already covered.  and a literal  aren't the same thing.  And some would not agree with your translation, anyway. A lot of people have looked at this phrase and come up with different literal renderings, because several of these particles can translate into English as multiple different words (e.g. "which" vs. "that", and so on).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:44, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  French pleonasm 

message: 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)
replies: text: Those are very different constructions though.  "She slept a deep" and "We wept of joy" do not parse in [Modern] English.  Better to point out that they can be reworded, with syntactical changes, to remove the unnecessary words.  This is WP:V material; it just needs to be source, being pretty obvious and non-controversial.  The gist can probably be sourc from some grammar books, but if the end result of this tweak isn't controversial, we have way more important sourcing to do, mostly at science and biography articles. It won't improve the encyclopedia to just delete the material, versus fixing it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:40, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  incorrect reasoning under "Other forms" section 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Semantic pleonasm, "every mother's child", and Shakespeare 

message: Per the comment of Special:diff/old/1080552717 23:12, 1 April 2022 edit:
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 . Fabrickator (talk) 01:39, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 "" 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)
thread_title:  Usage section citations 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Scampi 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Bilingual "tautological" expressions 

message: 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)
thread_title:  etymology of Yiddish words