Pleonasm Quotes

The phrase "think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self, it isn't thinking. ~ John Dewey

Fawcett also shared with me a passion for words and we would trawl the dictionary together and simply howl and wriggle with delight at the existence of such splendours as 'strobile' and 'magniloquent', daring and double-daring each other to use them to masters in lessons without giggling. 'Strobile' was a tricky one to insert naturally into conversation, since it means a kind of fir-cone, but magniloquent I did manage.

I, being I, went always that little bit too far of course. There was one master who had berated me in a lesson for some tautology or other. He, as what human being wouldn't when confronted with a lippy verbal show-off like me, delighted in seizing on opportunities to put me down. He was not, however, an English teacher, nor was he necessarily the brightest man in the world.

'So, Fry. "A lemon yellow colour" is precipitated in your test tube is it? I think you will find, Fry, that we all know that lemons are yellow and that yellow is a colour. Try not to use thee words where one will do. Hm?'

I smarted under this, but got my revenge a week or so later.

'Well, Fry? It's a simple enough question. What is titration?'

'Well, sir…, it's a process whereby…'

'Come on, come on. Either you know or you don't.'

'Sorry sir, I am anxious to avoid pleonasm, but I think…'

'Anxious to avoid what?'

'Pleonasm, sir.'

'And what do you mean by that?'

'I'm sorry, s ~ Stephen Fry

It was truer to my father to let the songs he'd sung die with him, little by little, averse at a time. How could these art-mongers constantly ignore the mortality of beauty, a pleonasm if ever I'd heard one? ~ Dimitri Verhulst

Struggling writer' e un pleonasm, cuz a writer is always struggling. ~ Teodor Burnar

It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely. ~ Anthony Marais