In the last article TPP covered the random word aglet and what it meant (hint – it has something to do with shoelaces). While doing this TPP remembered a word from many moons ago that was mentioned by someone. It was a really weird sounding word and TPP had to go an look up.
The word: “pleonasm” – weird, right?
Anyway, what is a pleonasm? Well, it is a word or phrase that you use in a sentence that is not needed or redundant to the sentence. An example is “I heard it with my own ears” – so the words “with my own” are the pleonasm because you could have only heard something with your own ears, not someone else’s.
Another example is “tuna fish” – the word fish it totally redundant.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that pleonasm stems from the Greek verb pleonazein, meaning “to be excessive,” is a fancy word for “redundancy.”
Your homework from today is to ponder on what pleonasm’s are and do you use them, if so where?
Ponder away!
