[George Simmers]

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

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Julie Steiner]

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]

[Roger Slater]

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

[Julie Steiner]

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.)

[George Simmers]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

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

Nope. Hate them.

[Max Goodman]

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...

[Lightning Bug]

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

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

[Roger Slater]

According to the American Heritage Idioms Dictionary:

whys and wherefores
All the underlying causes and reasons, as in She went into the whys and wherefores of the adoption agency's rules and procedures. This idiom today is a redundancy since why and wherefore mean the same thing. Formerly, however, why indicated the reason for something and wherefore how it came to be. [c. 1600 ]

[Lightning Bug]

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