English Pleonasms

According to the dictionary, pleonasm is ‘the use of more words than are required to express an idea; redundancy’. It’s used to describe when people use two words with the same meaning together, for example: free gift. Well, you don’t pay for a gift so it’s implied that it’s is for free.

Let’s check some other examples of pleonasms:

• ATM machine
• combined together
• final end
• free gift
• good benefit
• join together
• merge together
• sink down
• totally full

Here are some sentences that were spoken by celebrities or found in newspapers that have some kind of pleonasm. Some of them are really funny. Can you find the pleonasms in the following sentences?

• It’s deja vu all over again. – Yogi Berra
• Smoking can kill you, and if you’ve been killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life. – Brooke Shields
• Census says rich have most of the money. (in a newspaper)
• Cure suggestibility with hypnosis.
• Is that a mirage or am I seeing things?
• Sometimes you can observe a lot just by watching. – Yogi Berra
• Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it’s so incredible, it’s unbelievable. -Tom Landry
• I never make predictions, especially about the future. – Samuel Goldwyn
• Trapped, like a trap in a trap. -Dorothy Parker
• He lived his life to the end.
• Some people are superficial but that’s just on the surface.
• If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure. – former Vice-President Dan Quayle

Now, after reading this, try not to use redundant repetitious statements all over again!