#pleonasm

I sort of feel someone has been making Murderbot feel bad about its vocabulary here: for the record, MB, the opposite of an oxymoron would be a pleonasm:

“the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning (e.g. see with one's eyes ), either as a fault of style or for emphasis”

For the record I swear I have NEVER seen the word pleonasm in the wild? Has anyone?

Ambigram depicting Gödel's Incompleteness

So I played bit with concepts and words, and somehow I could manage to depict main aspects of Gödel's Incompleteness in that ambigram.

A simplified version of Gödel's incompleteness theoreoms:

Pleonasm (n.) the use of more words than necessary. 

Have you listened to Donald Trump’s spokespeople try to explain whatever new piece of insanity their boss has “tweeted” on social media? They use a blizzard of words to say as little as possible, trying to batter their listeners into submission. 

There’s a word for that…sort of. The Word of the Day is “pleonasm,” meaning the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea or convey meaning. It comes from the Greek “pleonasmos” and “pleonazein,” meaning “to be more than enough; to be superfluous.” 

We can all come up with everyday examples of pleonasm. “Tuna fish” is an obvious example. What is tuna if it’s not a fish? (Okay, there’s a prickly pear known as a “tuna,” but I mean, really?) How about a “free gift?” It wouldn’t be much of a gift if you had to pay for it, now would it? 

Yogi Berra probably had never heard the word pleonasm when he said “It’s déjà vu all over again.” But that likely qualifies as a pleonasm, too.

Sometimes pleonasm is just an unfortunate redundancy. TV sports guys like to refer to “the frozen tundra” of Lambeau Field in Green Bay. But “tundra” is a region in which the subsoil is permanently frozen. People who say, “I prepaid in advance” probably don’t understand how redundant their words are. 

But pleonasm is also often used deliberately, for emphasis. “I killed him dead” seems somehow more fatal than “I killed him.” Similarly, “I saw it with my own eyes” appears more forceful than “I saw it.” (How else would you see it, if not with your eyes? And if not your own eyes, than whose?) 

Skillful writers can use pleonasm to reinforce an idea. Shakespeare (he was pretty skillful) described the stabbing of Julius Caesar by his close friend Brutus as “the most unkindest cut of all.” It wasn’t just unkind; it wasn’t even just the unkindest cut. Coming from Brutus made it the most unkindest cut. 

And then you have the Trump spokespeople, who have elevated pleonasm almost to an art form. On March 4th, Trumplethinskin issued these four tweets:

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (PLEASE NOTE: One of Trump’s earliest mentors was Roy Cohn, lawyer for the lying, bullying, Commie-bashing Senator Joe McCarthy, for whom McCarthyism is named).

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by a court earlier. A NEW LOW!”

“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (PLEASE NOTE: Yes, Mr. Trump did, indeed, spell “tap” wrong). 

Despite those repeated references to wiretapping and wiretapped phones – which would have constituted a felony by President Obama – and despite the flat denials by the U.S. Intelligence Community that no wiretapping of Trump, Trump Tower or the Trump campaign took place, White House press secretary Sean “Spicy” Spicer used plenty of pleonasm to explain to reporters that when Trump said “wiretapping” (in quotes), he didn’t mean wiretapping (not in quotes). Despite the repeated, tweeted references, Trump (Spicer said) “was very clear in his tweet that it was ‘wiretapping.’ That spans a whole host of surveillance types of options.” Spicer graciously conceded that Trump “doesn’t really think that President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally.”  But Spicy insisted that “The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities.” 

Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway took it a bit further, explaining what some of those other surveillance activities might include. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets, any number of ways” she said. “Microwaves that turn into cameras. We know this is a fact of modern life.”  Yeah. Your microwave is spying on you.