Redundant
 

I'd like to start a light-hearted look at redundancies. Let's post some we have noticed, or are long-time pet peeves, or that we aren't sure are, but think they should be. Discussion and debate is welcomed.

I'll start with one I'm not sure of, but I have argued it to be, from multiple alma maters: "conquer and prevail".

I've also argued that "fend for yourself" has reached the stage, as you never hear fend used elsewise.

Bugsy

"on a mountain high"! :) High is kinda the definition of a mountain, no? If it weren't high, it would be a hill.

Also, since my daughter is learning to drive, the phrase "bring the vehicle to a full and complete stop" comes to mind. I've yet to see a full stop that wasn't complete, or vice versa.

My church choir director is forever inviting the congregation to "join together" in singing hymn number such-and-such. A minor annoyance, but it really sets my teeth on edge after the fourth or fifth time I've heard it in an hour.

[Edited to add: This is the opposite of a redundancy, but a few days ago I had to look up the definition of "perspicuous," and felt betrayed. Definitely a case of false advertising.]

Supermarkets advertising 'pre-prepared' salads. This should be a capital offence.

I'm afraid I am one who thinks these things into a sort of inner peace. Bringing the vehicle to a full stop? Brake on, no forward motion. To make that stop complete, one must apply the handbrake and switch off the engine. Innit?

Yesterday I was forced to listen, yet again, to a group of folk on a train howling against the phrase in the tannoy announcement "the next station stop will be..." One of them actually shrieked "aaagh! I hate that - station and stop are the same thing!" I rose from my seat like a pantomime fairy and bellowed "Oh, no they're not!"

"Think," I growled "about what he actually said" - We are now approaching Cardiff Central; Cardiff Central will be our next station stop.

Trains often stop before pulling into stations. They wait to be swtiched onto the right track for the platform, they may have to wait for another train to go out before they can come in. Even with the announcement I have seen folk panicking because the train is stationary and the doors appear to be jammed...

What is needed to make all plain is for the train manager to stress the line correctly and, failing that, for the passengers to use a little common sense.

Mountain high is harder to justify. I immediately thought of the song lyric wherein I have always believed in the invisible hyphens; river-deep, mountain-high.

The difference between a hill and a mountain is a source of harmless ho-ho in a film about canny Welsh folk outwitting an English person (which is always good for a laugh round here) and suggests that there is an argument for graduations of mountainness that would allow of high ones as distinct from barely-to-middling ones on the way to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En...n_a_ Mountain

However, putting the high after the mountain looks suspiciously rhyme-driven to me.

Ann, thank you for your lucid justification of the 'station stop' announcements: I'll never gripe about them again.
I am somehow enraged by the train having to come 'to a complete stand at the platform'. Is the train going to rear up on its hind carriages to bring this about?
There is always the feeling with railway announcements that the men writing or saying them are struggling excessively to formalise phrases that might otherwise sound natural. And all the staff sound adenoidal and have accents that suggest they were brought up in Slough but once overheard an elocution lesson.

I believe they used the perfectly comprehensible (to me) phrase "a complete standstill" until someone perceived that as tautology.

Anyway, it only applies to those awful trains where you have to lean out of an opened window to depress a handle on the outside of an outward-opening door. The Zen doors that say "press when illuminated" are under the control of the conductor so that passengers cannot be prematurely ejaculated.

totally, wholly, absolutely, utterly, entirely, . . . . etc. UNIQUE !

I always mutter on a train when asked to ensure that I take all my personal belongings with me. What about my impersonal belongings? (A volume of poems with a classicist bent, for example?)

A "pet peeve" of mine: the superfluous and ungrammatical "as" used by people who are incapable of distinguishing between two different constructions:

xxI am not as big as he is

xxxxand

xxBig as I am, he is bigger

and who, in the second case, insist on writing

xxAs big as I am, he is bigger.

George, I think it's to discourage kleptomaniacs from taking other people's belongings with them.

Buffet car announcements in which we are advised that 'hot and cold beverages' can be obtained. They sometimes go on to list every conceivable beverage on sale, making the earlier phrase redundant.

Ha, ha, Martin... that's one of my pet peeves. Yahoo has one of those lovely sponsored "news" articles entitled, "Cars so unique there's only one of them."

And, Julie...I see what you mean about "perspicuous". It makes me think about the old joke about the quest for an absolute solvent.

Well, it's never stopped me.

Though "station" and "stop" don't mean the exact same thing, so they are perhaps rescued from a charge of redundancy, it's still true that saying either one without the other would fully convey the intended message.

But in general, I'm not sure I'm as vehemently against redundant phrases as some people here seem to be. It's colloquial speech, and we're not paying for words by the letter. A "full and complete stop" may be redundant, but it does serve the purpose of emphasis. If someone told you, "I love and adore you," I hope your response wouldn't be, "That's redundant!"

I think I'm with Roger. People are over-analysing spoken communication, which has a lot of redundancy. (Gives the bran time to catch up with extra processing time.) Things that look inelegant or redundant in cold print may have a function when heard over a PA system. Something formulaic with a couple of words which more or less mean the same may give you a chance to switch on and get the message even if you missed the beginning of it.

Jerome, of course, you're right. But I hope this thread qualifies - as it shold to be here at all - as an amusement. Incidentally, isn't the 'drills' in Drills & Amusements?

Thank you for noticing the intent, Adrian, and, Roger and Jerome, as much time as is spent on this board urging economy and efficiency in wording, I'd have thought it would be a safe place to discourage inefficiency.

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.

"cease and desist"
"the rule of law" (this meant something at one time - it's now degenerated to a kind of political, mostly conservative, throat clearing.)

I have always supposed 'As big as I am' to be an Americanism. For the Brit the first 'as' is redundant. Isn't that so, Brian?

I hate the phrase 'the rule of law', as if laws must aways be obeyed. What tosh! Break a law every day, just to keep yourself in practise.

'Sharia law' is a redundancy, since 'sharia' means 'law'.

Actually, I think "cease" and "desist" mean two somewhat different things. To "cease" is to stop doing something that you were already doing, but you can "desist" from doing something even if you weren't already doing it. Right?

At any rate, this isn't a colloquial phrase but a legal one, and there are reasons to keep using it in a legal context. The main reason is that any lawyer using the phrase knows exactly how courts will interpret it. While a lawyer may feel that he knows how to say it better, there's no upside to being the lawyer who finds someday that a court came up with an unexpected interpretation that damages the lawyer's client.

George, I suppose you don't like the fennec foxes of the Sahara Desert, either. ('Fennec' means fox; 'sahara' means desert.)

So, Roger...pet peeves are one of your pet peeves, then? [Responding to your earlier post]

I don't mind pet peeves as long a they're house-trained.

Heh!

Roger, you might like the Wikipedia article on pleonasm, which makes some points similar to the ones you just made. (Never mind, I guess that makes it redundant.)

Nope. Hate them.

The "Sahara Desert" probably does sound redundant to those who speak the language in which "sahara" means desert. I have enough Spanish to be annoyed by "The Rio Grande River."

**

This one is an error rather than a sloppy usage that's gained acceptance, but it's a common enough error (in my students' essays, for instance) and for years (until a building renovation apparently included the phone system) was on the outgoing phone message of the local library:

If you know the extension of the person for whom you wish to leave a message for...

I wonder how this fits into all those things, Julie.

"...but first we must investigate all the whys and wherefores."

According to the American Heritage Idioms Dictionary:

Well, yeah... but it's a redundancy because the words are different languages, like in some of that smart stuff Julie posted.

All this is of little significance to the hoi polloi.

We're concerning ourselves with the hoi polloi here now?!! Gosh... I didn't realize. Mea culpa apologies.

The hoi polloi is a redundancy. As Ann well knows.

So is "the alcohol", if we're really being picky. But pickiness and inebriation don't mix well.

.

Oh... so we're concerning ourselves with the alcohol here now?!! I hate when my knowledge ignorance gets exposed.

.

My pet peeve:

The redundancy of "his own" in "He choked on his own vomit" - a revolting sentence if ever there was one, anyway - but he (or she) couldn't choke on someone else's vomit!

Great thread, Bugsy :)

Jayne

Ha, ha, Jayne... very true. But despite that, I can almost imagine a person saying, "He choked on vomit," being met with, "His own?"

Maybe you could compromise and keep "his".

*blame Jayne, everybody*

Nah... that's a cop-out, Bugsy.

If I was met with the reply "His own?" I would have to "cease and desist" from my usual niceness and give that person a withering look... and sarcastically respond, "No, mine, actually."

But in reality the aforementioned revolting sentence is one I'd avoid uttering in the first place 'cos it makes me feel sick! ;)

(Yuk. Someone change the subject, quickly, please!)

Jayne

There's a whole class of redundancies around acronyms, like 'PIN number'.

It's become a regrettable fashion among TV chefs to add 'off' to any cooking verb, e.g. 'fry the onions off'. I hate that.