pleonasm

plural pleonasms

1. rhetoricuncountableRedundancy in wording.

   St. Jerome and St. Augustine are both sparing in the employment of the device of pleonasm.

   1939, John Nicholas Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome, Catholic University of America Press, page 5

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   Indeed, pleonasm, the use of superfluous or redundant words, is only part of the broader features of that style, the expressions of which have been so thoroughly analyzed by Franz Neirynck² and which for convenience will here be referred to as "dualisms."

   1989, Harold Riley, The Making of Mark: An Exploration, Mercer University Press, page 219

   My salvation is in my Saviour who saveth me hence the redundancy and pleonasm of my asseveration.

   1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford

2. countableA phrase involving pleonasm; a phrase containing one or more words which are redundant because their meaning is expressed elsewhere in the phrase.

   Tautologies and pleonasms gobble up space.

   2017 February 10, Jamie Fahey, “Sub standard procedures: a Guardian guide to subediting”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 01 Apr 2018

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   The oxymoron is a common type of wordplay that, frankly, isn’t all that amusing or challenging to identify, unless of course one stumbles upon oxymora involving the word oxymoron, such as oxymoronic pleonasm or pleonastic oxymoron (a pleonasm is a linguistic redundancy like burning fire).

   2015 May 15, Adam Lewis, “As a grammarian contrarian, I love opposites. But what about alternyms?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 23 Feb 2016

   Note he won’t shout loudly – that’s known as a pleonasm, when more words than necessary are used. It’s the chief criticism of the adverb: stripping interesting verbs like “shout” of their punch. The tautology can come across as immature.

   2019 April 29, Gary Nunn, “Don't ditch the adverb, the emoji of writing”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 23 Jul 2019