How about the increasingly frequent horror," outside of . . . " much loved by BBC on-the-spot reporters?
"I'm standing outside of Number10." (And everywhere else, it now seems.)

The BBC is now the prime offender against the most basic principles of good English. While I have no objection to the overbearing old Reith turning in his grave, I think he should be saved from the increasingly likely prospect of turning inside OF it.

Martin,

Your post reminded me of this viral email. In most of the cases, I think the word in question is overly superfluous. But in some cases it does seem to add some spice.

http://www.tysknews.com/LiteStuff/up.htm

Without the "of," though, I don't think Groucho Marx's comment would have been as funny: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

And in David Steinberg's old comedy routine, he not only cites a redundancy, but commits one as well:

"God says, 'Take off the shoes from off of your feet ...," God says in His redundant way."

Fair makes you want to throw UP, eh?

(Just remember not to inhale...)
.

Not a redundancy but a pet peeve: those who pronounce the word nuclear as NUCULAR (new-queue-ler). Executable crime, surely.

Yes, especially when, like GWB, they have the say-so to press the big red button.

In the U.S. the expression is "hold the fort down." To me all you need to do is hold the fort, as in hold the line, so down is superfluous. Anyway, why must it be held down, is it in danger of floating up? I thought a battle line lost ground by having to retreat backward or gained ground by advancing forward; so what's the down for? If there was a real fort and someone asked me to hold the fort down, I would tell him not to worry, since gravity would do that for us just fine. I would say it's in no danger of floating away, but we might have to hold it by making sure it doesn't have to retreat to the back of us. Besides, if you're holding something to begin with, surely it won't squiggle out of your grip to float up? Is the fort a bird? That might make a bit more sense. Hold the bird down that it might not fly up.

Don't all Americans say nucular?

I kind of like "pre-prepared salad." I like how even the letters repeat. At my local grocery store, all the items in the deli section are misspelled. All of them! This makes me happy. In fact, I published a poem inspired by a misspelling of blueberries that looked as though the word had fermented.

Walter, you're on the wrong thread. This is the one where you have to get annoyed by things. Your approach sounds much more enjoyable though.

I just wrote "can possibly" in another thread. Bwahahaha! Who's peeved?

What's wrong with can possibly?

Julie, not many of hoi polloi are aware that "Bwahahaha" is, in fact, also redundant. In the original language (I forgot what it was...something ancient) ,the definition of our modern "Bwa" was "Now I say h". Therefore, the "Bwa" actually includes the "h" of the first "ha".

Since I returned here (UK), I notice the phrase 'going forward' has become a part of the language - it used to be corporate-speak, but it seems everyone is now going forward.
I shall resist.

I don't see the problem, you are going forward, not going backwards or going sideways. There's no redundancy.

I also think the 'rule of law' is not redundant, you can have laws but if they are not enforced then there is no rule.
Similarly with trains 'a complete stop' means all the carriages have stopped moving.
Also the train may be longer than the station so stop and station mean very different things.
absolutely is my fav redundant word, you can couple it with almost anything and it will still not mean a thing.

In reference to the passage of time, how do you go in any other direction? That was the usage I meant, and I assumed that was obvious.
True, if it relates to distance and direction, then it's valid.

But it makes sense to speak of going backwards in time, even if it's something that is not actually possible. "If I could go backwards in time, I'd do things differently." "The way he regressed, I almost felt that time was going backwards."

Your point, I gather, is that one cannot go backwards in time, one can only go forward. But in restating your point, I used "go forward" in a non-redundant manner with regard to time.

Roger makes a good point. We have to be able to speak of going back in time, even though it is not physically possible. When someone relates a piece of contemporary history, we need to be able to ask him, if necessary, to go back to the beginning. H.G. Wells had to be able to write of the Time Traveller going back in time as well as forward; asked to describe the plot, the language accommodates the impossible action without difficulty. I ask someone who gives me directions to skip one part, but I need the language to tell him to go back to an earlier part of his instruction as well.
Back to redundancies, plan ahead is a common offender. Going forward is fine, but advance forward would be a redundancy and must needs peeve I do believe.

Do you leave your property to your heirs absolutely?

My reading of Dorothy Sayers tells me that absolutely has a legal meaning in property law, though I can't remember what it is.

There is also the set: I am fairly sure, I am pretty well sure, I am absolutely sure.

Of course, H.G Wells' time machine requires a going-back in time. Gazing into the sky is looking back in time. Hindsight is seeing the wisdom or otherwise of an alternative course of action. Etc Etc.

I am referring to the redundant clause 'going forward' plonked into a sentence when the speaker is talking about his or her intentions.
Simple as that.

I don't know if I agree that "plan ahead" is a redundancy that ought to be avoided. I think it conveys a meaning that "plan" alone would often not convey. "Be sure to plan ahead" certainly sounds more natural to me than "Be sure to plan." Or, "I suspected it might rain, so I brought my umbrella. I'm glad I planned ahead." Wouldn't that last sentence sound a bit awkward if you left out "ahead"?

Romance languages tend to encode directional information into the verb itself; linguists say that the path of motion is verb-framed. In contrast, Germanic languages provide directional information via auxiliary particles; linguists say that the path of motion is satellite-framed.

Since modern English has satellite-framed Germanic ancestry, but also extensive borrowings from verb-framed Latin and French (et al.), the directional information sometimes gets both verb-framed and satellite-framed. Thus the belt-and-suspenders effect.

Roger, yes it is true that "I'm glad I planned ahead" might sound awkward without ahead. But planned ahead is still redundant. You see there are some redundancies we use that have become common parts of our speaking and some of which would be awkward to omit. But technically they are still redundant. To be sure, Plan is a. trans. To arrange in advance (an action or proposed proceeding); to devise, contrive, or formulate (a project or manner of proceeding). Thus ahead is not strictly necessary since the verb itself is to make arrangements in advance for the future. Yet as I said this is a case of a naturalized redundancy, not all redundancies are to be avoided. That said, I will plan for graduation is better to my mind than I will plan ahead for graduation. In some cases, the ahead can be omitted to get rid of unnecessary words.

I heard someone refer to 'the male penis' on TV today.

That's funny. But I put +"male penis" into Google and it returned over 500K results. But then I looked for "female penis" and found this.

Oh yes... like "LCD display", "PCB boards", "AC current" and "ISBN number".

This thread is fun and it's great to sound off... speaking of which, I also agree with Rob's other post #40, re TV chefs using ''off'' as in ''cook the onions off..." I hate that too.

"Oh, it's hard not to feel superior... when you are!" as my husband likes to say (not knowingly having pinched the expression :D)

Jayne

Ah, my dears - we live, we learn. All over the Eratosphere words and phrases lie awaiting discovery along the shores of the Atlantic. I pick them up and polish them and slip them in my pocket. Moments ago on GT I found another. By planning ahead we can go loaded for bear. Hurrah!

Ann, you might be referring to the one that inspired this thread - someone saying they would "...continue to persist..." on some mission. I suppose the opponents - being of contrary mind - vowed to persist, in their continued crusade.

A couple of items posted on Facebook by Pat Myers:

WAMU news: "An audible cheer broke out in the state legislature chambers."

On "All Things Considered," someone was described as having "a unique style all her own."

Fortunately they no longer do it, but there was a time when ATMs asked the user to 'please wait for a short time'. Well, I waited, often, but I'm damned if I ever got a short time, let alone a round the world.

People here often call ATM's; 'ATM machines' not realizing ATM stands for Automatic Teller Machine.

"ATM machine" is sort of like saying "the BBC corporation." But I think the last the worst. One might unthinkingly parrot the common mistake "ATM machine" at least from inattention; whereas "BBC corporation" is both redundant and newfangled. You might suffer to repeat the first redundancy from careless mimicry, but if you say the second you can only have introduced a new one of your own making.

The more I read of these redundancies, the more inclined I am to forgive them. Some add colour to a sentence, others merely enable rhythm. Like errant apostrophes, they will drive us mad if we don't forgive their existence.

It's too late, Adrian. I've already gone off my rocker due to errant apostrophes.

Jayne

I agree. In some of the redundancies mentioned, the repeat is merely an intensifier -- There is some additional horror in the statement "He drowned in his own blood".

But perhaps even more horror in the statement "He drowned in his children's blood." I wish I hadn't thought of that.

They are both the same.

or, as some of my students would be inclined to put it: Both of the two of them are exactly the same.

(Now that I think of it, this illustrates why these redundancies are worth pointing out. There's nothing particularly egregious in the first one. It can, as some have said about other redundancies, be preferable in some contexts to the more succinct version, but it may show the writer hasn't stopped to consider the words, which can lead to writing like the second example.)

One thing that no one in the thread has closely examined [wait, is that a redundancy? aren't all examinations close?] is what precisely is the problem with redundancy? Are we just trying to work within the 140-character limit of Twitter? How exactly does a redundancy affect our ability to communicate? Rather than starting with the premise that redundancy is a bad thing, shouldn't we ask why? And if we do, I believe that we will find that the reasons don't apply to each and every [wait, is that redundant? why not just say "each" or just say "every"?] instance of redundancy.