Pleonasm

A pleonasm (Greek πλεονασμóς pleonasmós "Abundance" ) is a figure of speech that describes a word wealth without information gain.

A pleonasm is when within a group of words a particular meaning is multiple (often with different parts of speech, such as adjective / noun) housed in different ways expressed or means of expression are used, contribute any additional information. This figure can thus be redundant at the semantic level, however, the expressions of a statement.

The pleonasm is to reinforce, clarify or special highlighting of what is said is used ( " cold ice "; " touched with my own hands "). Fixed phrases with pleonastischem character arise when one of the components (such as a ungebräuchliches word or a foreign word ) loses its original meaning, and the term is supplemented to illustrate a meaningful same element ( " foot "). The less the original meaning is the speaker accessible, the less the overall expression can be viewed as a pleonasm. Pleonastic neologisms without recognizable intended rhetorical background are considered bad style of language or style flowers ( style error).

The opposite of pleonasm is the ellipse. Pleonasm and tautology are often used interchangeably.

Examples of pleonasms

The frequently referred to as " white mold " is sometimes referred to as not appropriate as the horses referred to as mold can not have from birth a white coat.

The food court is a pleonasm, the Court defines the concept as a boundary for institutionalized arbitration, but a pleonasm, since court is also used in the sense of food court.

Should not be confused with a pleonasm a double negative in a logical function, if it is indeed such acts and the corresponding double negative visual words are not used incorrectly.

Grammatical pleonasm

In linguistics, also particles are called pleonasms that have no semantic content, and often meet only a pragmatic function:

• And read probably actually too much ( quote from Arthur Schnitzler: The dance, emphasis not in original)