6 Weird Ways the English Language Is Redundant

There’s a section in comedian George Carlin’s 2004 book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? titled “Count the Superfluous Redundant Pleonastic Tautologies.” 

“My fellow countrymen,” it begins, “I speak to you as coequals, knowing you are deserving of the honest truth. And let me warn you in advance, my subject matter concerns a serious crisis caused by an event in my past history.”

Truth is always honest, history is always past, and Carlin has a point: The English language can be pretty redundant. But linguistic redundancy—also known as pleonasm or tautology—isn’t meaningless. Sometimes, as with the honest truth, it works as an intensifier. Even Shakespeare did this: In Julius Caesar, Marc Antony calls Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar “the most unkindest cut of all.”

Pleonasm can also add nuance to a sentiment. While your countrymen are your fellows by dint of a shared homeland, my fellow countrymen conveys a greater sense of egalitarian companionship than my countrymen ever could on its own. And though a crisis is inherently serious, saying so helps differentiate it from a minor crisis.

In short, there’s nothing inherently wrong with redundancy—but it can be fun to recognize it in the wild. So here are some of our favorite superfluous redundant pleonastic tautologies.

Nape of the neck

Often, as Carlin illustrated, we modify a term with a word or phrase already covered by the term’s definition. Nape, for example, means “the back of the neck.” So when you say “the nape of the neck,” you’re essentially saying “the back of the neck of the neck.” Another corporeal pleonasm is shrug one’s shoulders: Shoulders are the only thing you can shrug. (But you can shrug off any number of things.)

A gift, meanwhile, is “something voluntarily transferred … without compensation,” per Merriam-Webster, so there’s no need to call something a “free gift.” Nor do you need to plan in advance or postpone until later—you can just plan or postpone. A combined total is just a total, end results are just results, and close proximity is just proximity.

Revert back

This tendency has also generated some redundant phrasal verbs. Take revert back: Revert means “to come or go back,” so you don’t need to revert back to your old routine—you can just revert to your old routine. 

Advocate for is a similar story. Advocate means “to support or argue for,” so tacking on a for is technically superfluous; advocating a cause is perfectly acceptable. (Though it’s worth pointing out that people have been using advocate for since the 1600s.) And feel free to enter a room instead of entering into it.

Outside of

After a verb isn’t the only place you might find an unnecessary preposition; we sometimes even toss one after a preposition. Consider outside of. As a preposition, outside means “beyond the limits of.” Just like we saw with advocate, the preposition (in this case, of) is built into the definition. If you think outside of the box, you’re thinking beyond the limits of of the box. Wouldn’t you rather think outside the box?

Alongside of is a variant of this issue. Alongside can mean “along the side of,” “beside,” “in company with,” or “in addition to.” Every sense comes with its own preposition, so it’s redundant to add an of (but widespread enough that the practice is acceptable).

Unthaw 

Other times, the redundancy is part of the word itself. Thaw means “to unfreeze,” so there’s no point in adding un- before it. But enough people have done so that the word unthaw is dictionary-certified. It just means “to thaw.”

Unthaw is far from the only word with a redundant un-. In fact, English speakers have a long history of using that prefix to intensify rather than negate. On the verb side, there’s also unpeel (meaning “to peel”) and unloosen (“to loosen”); adjectives include unhelpless (“helpless”) and unboundless (“boundless”). If it makes you feel any better, the Oxford English Dictionary labels those last two examples rare and obsolete.

DC Comics

Since the DC of DC Comics stands for Detective Comics, the whole title is Detective Comics Comics. This kind of redundancy is winkingly known as RAS syndrome, for redundant acronym syndrome syndrome. (That’s acronym in the looser “abbreviation” sense, rather than “an abbreviation pronounced as a word.”) Other examples of RAS syndrome include PIN number (personal identification number number), ATM machine (automated teller machine machine), and LCD display (liquid crystal display display).

The hoi polloi

Hoi polloi is Greek for “the many,” so the hoi polloi literally means “the the many.” The English language’s reliance on loanwords makes this type of pleonasm incredibly common, especially in geography. La brea, for example, is Spanish for “the tar,” so the La Brea Tar Pits in California are basically “the the tar tar pits.” And whenever you bring up “minestrone soup,” you’re saying something like “big soup soup.” Minestra is Italian for “soup,” and -one is an augmentative suffix signifying a larger-than-normal size.

That’s not to say these and other comparable pleonasms are incorrect. For one thing, English speakers couldn’t possibly know the literal meaning of every loanword. But more importantly, the loanwords themselves often aren’t used literally: They have their own functions in English. With the La Brea Tar Pits, for instance, La Brea isn’t functioning as the tar—it’s functioning as the name of particular tar pits, which you’re mentioning to differentiate them from, say, the Carpinteria Tar Pits. In hoi polloi ’s case, hoi isn’t functioning as the—it’s functioning as part of a phrase that refers to the general populace. In other words, hoi polloi doesn’t really mean “the many” in English; it’s just a synonym for masses.

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