tautology
Sign in to savestatement which repeats the same idea, using near-synonymous morphemes, words, or phrases
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- stylistic device
- Subclass of
- redundancy
- Said to be same as
- pleonasm
Show 1 more fact
- different from
- tautology
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~5 min read
Encyclopedic overview
In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point. Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is.
Etymology
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tautology” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.