Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of pleonasm.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Replace "of" with "have," and it's a perfectly serviceable phrase pleonasms-that is, using more words than necessary.

    Writing, Clear and Simple

  • The neoplasm of my pleonasms gets my jelly in a righteous tart!

    Excerpt from Urdoxa 2.0

  • Then, again, many of those verses are disfigured with syntactical pleonasms and other grave errors.

    The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 Books 4, 5, 6 and 7

  • Ey, an island, [Footnote: Isle of Sheppey, Mersea Island, etc, are pleonasms.] survives as the last element of many names, and is not always to be distinguished from hey (hay, Settlements, Chapter III) and ley.

    The Romance of Names

  • In pleonasms, which are comparatively prevalent among the uneducated, the same essential structure is seen; as, for instance, in -- "The men, they were there."

    The Philosophy of Style

  • Its figures of speech, pleonasms, ellipses, anacolutha, pros to semainomenon, and the like have no reality; they do not either make conscious expressions more intelligible or show the way in which they have arisen; they are chiefly designed to bring an earlier use of language into conformity with the later.

    Cratylus

  • Such pleonasms are ornative of speech, especially when they render the same thing more emphatically so, than if there were not that pleonastical addition.

    The Whole Works of the Rev. John Howe, M.A. with a Memoir of the Author. Vol. VI.

  • I do not see the impropriety of _verbal question_; such pleonasms are common.

    Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

  • To make matters worse, squareness is always insisted on by the "straight" and "square" crowd, those who speak in vexatious pleonasms such as reference to "straight-edged squares" (as if there are any other kind).

    Evolution News & Views

  • To make matters worse, squareness is always insisted on by the "straight" and "square" crowd, those who speak in vexatious pleonasms such as reference to "straight-edged squares" (as if there are any other kind).

    Evolution News & Views

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