pleonasm

noun [ˈpliəˌnæzəm]

pronunciation

CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (pipeline/ipa-en.mjs: P L IY1 AH0 N AE2 Z AH0 M → ˈpliəˌnæzəm); confirm with a phonetician; no frequency figure, open source

Pleonasm names a style and rhetoric figure: surplus wording beyond need, often near-synonymous lexemes; apart from tautology and from ellipsis.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Definitions

ling. / rhet. / styl. Stylistic and rhetorical figure: the speaker or writer piles extra wording beyond what the thing requires, often through near-synonymous lexemes. Axis sits at that surplus. Tautology is a neighbour, not always a synonym. Ellipsis (omission) sits on the opposite quantity pole.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
hist. lex. Arct 1921: Pleonazm covers surplus wording beyond need, a pile of synonymous words, a fault opposite to conciseness; deliberate use in fine style lends pomp and force. Pleonastyczny: containing pleonasms. Brückner skips. Webster PLEONASM: Rhetorical redundancy. Skeat: Gk. πλεονασμός via L. pleonasmus.

source
Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm; Pleonastyczny); A. Brückner 1927 (no pleona*); Webster 1913 (PLEONASM); W. W. Skeat 1910 (PLEONASM), open source
didact. / rhet. In class, pleonasm keeps surplus wording beside tautology, ellipsis, anaphora, epiphora, apostrophe, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, litotes, irony, antithesis, oxymoron, metaphor, simile, stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics. Borders among fault, emphasis, and plain wordiness need review.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
colloq. Loose talk may dump every repetition or every logical tautology under this label. This card keeps one axis: surplus words beyond what marking the thing needs. Foils: ellipsis (omission), tautology (same judgment restated), hyperbole (scale overstatement). Apart from plain wordiness without the figure.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Examples

Webster under PLEONASM (Rhet.) cites I saw it with my own eyes as redundancy of language; that is rhetorical pleonasm, not a strict logical tautology.

source
Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (PLEONASM), open source
Morning drill ran on deliberate piles of near-synonymous lexemes beyond need; ellipsis returned on the omission side, hyperbole on the scale-overstatement side, tautology on the same-judgment side.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Source shelf: Arct Pleonazm (1921) with both surplus and deliberate-emphasis axes, Webster PLEONASM (1913), Skeat 1910 (Gk. πλεονασμός), Brückner with no pleona* lemma.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
A worksheet that stamped every repetition as rhetorical pleonasm erased the split between surplus wording and logical tautology or plain wordiness.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Board labels: pleonasm (surplus) | ellipsis (omission) | tautology | hyperbole | litotes | stylistics, keeping the surplus figure apart from omission, same-judgment restatement, scale overstatement, understatement, and the style domain.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Usage

Casual notes may brand any repetition as pleonasm with no axis. Seminar peels layers: surplus words beyond need; deliberate stylistic emphasis (Arct: used on purpose it adds pomp, force, and emphasis); ellipsis as omission foil; tautology as same-judgment foil. Arct keeps Pleonazm on a greater quantity of words or clauses and on a fault opposite to conciseness, and also on deliberate use in fine style. Webster keeps PLEONASM on rhetorical redundancy of language. Skeat traces Greek πλεονασμός. Brückner skips. Without layers only a hollow slogan about wordiness remains.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Open-book record. In Arct (1921) Pleonazm marks wording piled past need and clusters of same-sense lexemes; a stylistic vice set against conciseness, and deliberate use lends pomp, force, and emphasis. Pleonastyczny: containing pleonasms. Webster 1913: PLEONASM; Rhet. redundancy; cites a first-person sight formula as redundancy. Skeat 1910: L. pleonasmus, Gk. πλεονασμός via πλεονάζειν and πλέον; Minsheu fleonasme (1627). Brückner 1927 leaves the Polish lemma blank. Derivation under etymology.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm; Pleonastyczny); Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (PLEONASM); W. W. Skeat 1910 (PLEONASM); A. Brückner 1927 (no lemma), open source

Scholarly English marks surplus wording for compression talk in reverse and for pathos through pile-up. Careful editors discard worksheets that treat every repetition as the rhetorical figure and discard glosses that never name the surplus axis. The pleonasm / tautology / ellipsis / hyperbole border stays debated in seminars. Chronology of the label stays blank until a primary page is cited. Polish counterpart: pleonazm (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Classrooms revisit surplus talk among tropes and place stylistic pleonasm next to tautology, ellipsis, anaphora, epiphora, apostrophe, alliteration, assonance, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, litotes, simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, onomatopoeia, stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics. CMUdict lists pleonasm (/ˈpliəˌnæzəm/). Polish pleonazm sits in SGJP. Live neighbours include those tropes. Without the surplus-wording axis the label collapses into tautology talk or plain wordiness talk.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (PLEONASM); CMUdict (pleonasm present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (pleonazm present), open source

Word forms

Countable noun: singular pleonasm / plural pleonasms. Nearby Webster forms: pleonast (n., rare), pleonastic / pleonastical (a.), pleonastically (adv.). CMUdict lemma pleonasm present.

forms in use

przypadek	forma
singular	pleonasm
plural	pleonasms
related agent noun (Webster)	pleonast (Webster PLEONAST; rare)
related adjective (Webster)	pleonastic / pleonastical (Webster PLEONASTIC; PLEONASTICAL)
related adverb (Webster)	pleonastically (Webster PLEONASTICALLY)

Word forms: Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (PLEONASM; PLEONAST; PLEONASTIC; PLEONASTICAL; PLEONASTICALLY); CMUdict (pleonasm present) · source

Collocations

stylistic pleonasm

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
pleonasm against tautology

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
surplus of words

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
rhetorical pleonasm

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
distinguish pleonasm from ellipsis

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms pleonazm (Polish counterpart; SGJP present; Arct Pleonazm; check scope at review), redundancy of language (loose descriptive neighbour; Webster PLEONASM; check scope at review), surplus of words (approximation; Arct Pleonazm; Webster PLEONASM; check scope at review), pile of synonymous words (approximation; Arct Pleonazm; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (pleonazm present); M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm), open source

Antonyms conciseness (contrast: Arct Pleonazm as a stylistic fault opposite to conciseness; check scope at review), ellipsis (axis contrast: omission of context-obvious words, not surplus; live EN pair; not a clean antonym of the label alone), statement without surplus (contrast: wording without needless lexemes; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm), open source

Etymology

English pleonasm rests on Webster's PLEONASM card: rhetorical redundancy of language (more words than necessary; a cited first-person sight formula); neighbouring cards cover PLEONAST, PLEONASTIC, PLEONASTICAL, PLEONASTICALLY. Skeat 1910 treats PLEONASM as Latin pleonasmus from Greek πλεονασμός (abundance, pleonasm) via πλεονάζειν (to abound, lit. to be more) and πλέον (neut. of πλέων / πλείων, more); Minsheu fleonasme (1627). Arct 1921 indexes Pleonazm and Pleonastyczny. Brückner 1927 does not index pleona*. We avoid copying dictionary wording. Polish counterpart: pleonazm. Axis of this card: rhetorical / stylistic surplus.

source

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (PLEONASM; PLEONAST; PLEONASTIC; PLEONASTICAL), open source

also

W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910 (PLEONASM), open source

also

M. Arct, Słownik wyrazów obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921 (Pleonazm; Pleonastyczny), open source

also

A. Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków 1927 (no pleona* lemma), open source

Related words

ellipsis , axis foil (omission of a word, not surplus); EN pair already live
apostrophe , trope neighbour (second-person address); EN pair already live
anaphora , trope neighbour (shared lexeme at openings); EN pair already live
epiphora , trope neighbour (shared lexeme at closings); EN pair already live
alliteration , trope neighbour (consonant echo); EN pair already live
assonance , trope neighbour (vowel echo); EN pair already live
onomatopoeia , trope neighbour (sound-of-thing echo); EN pair already live
irony , foil along the sense axis (reversal); EN pair already live
antithesis , trope neighbour (opposing members); EN pair already live
oxymoron , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
hyperbole , axis foil (scale overstatement, not lexeme surplus); EN pair already live
litotes , axis foil (understatement); EN pair already live
simile , foil along the likeness axis (open pairing with like / as); EN pair already live
metaphor , trope neighbour (transfer); EN pair already live
euphemism , trope neighbour (etiquette softening); EN pair already live
metonymy , trope neighbour (contiguity transfer); EN pair already live
synecdoche , trope neighbour (part for whole); EN pair already live
stylistics , domain of style (pleonasm axis sits in stylistics); EN pair already live
rhetoric , domain of tropes; EN pair already live
semantics , sense and reference neighbour; EN pair already live
pleonazm , Polish counterpart (SGJP present; Webster PLEONASM)

Related entries

The same entry in Polish: pleonazm

Questions and answers

What does pleonasm mean?

It names a stylistic and rhetorical device: the speaker or writer adds needless lexemes past what the referent needs, often through near-synonymous piles. Ellipsis is omission of context-obvious words. Hyperbole is scale overstatement. Tautology is a neighbour of same-judgment restatement. Plain wordiness without the figure fails to replace this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

How does pleonasm differ from ellipsis?

Pleonasm on this card keeps surplus wording beyond need (Arct Pleonazm; Webster PLEONASM). Ellipsis (Arct Elipsa sense omission; Webster ELLIPSIS) is deliberate omission of context-obvious words. Surplus axis differs from omission axis; school shortcuts blur the labels often.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm; Elipsa); Webster 1913 (PLEONASM; ELLIPSIS), open source

How does pleonasm differ from tautology and hyperbole?

Under pleonasm the axis sits at surplus wording or a pile of near-synonymous lexemes (Arct Pleonazm; Webster PLEONASM). Tautology often restates the same judgment in other words. Hyperbole (Webster HYPERBOLE) overstates scale. Axis foil: lexeme surplus versus same-judgment restatement versus scale overstatement, not a synonym of the label alone.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (PLEONASM); M. Arct 1921 (Pleonazm), open source

Where does the word pleonasm come from, and what forms sit with it?

Webster 1913 ties PLEONASM to rhetorical redundancy of language; PLEONAST, PLEONASTIC, PLEONASTICAL, PLEONASTICALLY sit nearby. Skeat 1910: PLEONASM (L. pleonasmus; Gk. πλεονασμός; πλεονάζειν; πλέον; Minsheu fleonasme 1627). Arct 1921: Pleonazm; Pleonastyczny. Brückner 1927: no lemma. Forms: pleonasm / pleonasms. CMUdict IPA: /ˈpliəˌnæzəm/. Polish pair: pleonazm (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913; CMUdict (pleonasm present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (pleonazm present), open source

Is every surplus of words a pleonasm?

No. Any wordiness can be plain economy without the figure. Pleonasm holds surplus wording beyond need as a stylistic or rhetorical device (Arct: a fault opposite to conciseness, and deliberate use lends force). Without that axis the label collapses into tautology talk, hyperbole talk, or plain repetition.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)