Quora Answer: What is the Clear Difference between Tautology & Pleonasm?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What is the clear difference between tautology and pleonasm?” 

In rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea, in words or phrases.  The word was coined in Greek from ταὐτός, “the same” and λόγος, “word”, and transmitted through 3^rd Century Latin tautologia and French tautologie.  It first entered in English in the 16^th century.  The use of the term, “logical tautology” was introduced into English by Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, the Austrian-British philosopher, in 1919. 

There is a difference between what we consider a literary tautology and a logical one.  A literary tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always.  For example, if we say, “That person is either a man or a woman”, that is true. 

Examples of a literary tautology include this this quote from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: “To be or not to be, that is the question.”  This is among the most famous examples. 

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” has this: 

“But the fact is I was napping,

And so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping,

Tapping at my chamber door.” 

Another example is George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”, where he wrote, “I’m willing to tell you.  I’m wanting to tell you.  I’m waiting to tell you.”  Here, it is in the form of an alliterative triad. 

On the other hand, pleonasm, is redundancy in linguistic expression.  The word itself is from Ancient Greek πλεονασμός, pleonasmós, derived from πλέον, pleon, “to be in excess”.  This makes is a form of tautology in rhetoric.  The repetition may be an emphasis, a redundancy of language, or an established convention that crept into the language. 

An example of pleonic emphasis would be William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”: “This was the most unkindest cut of all.”  Here, the emphasis is the nature of the cut, that not only was it fatal in the sense of mortality, but fatal to the relationship, the betrayal of someone Gaius Julius Caesar considered the closest to him. 

And then we have John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: 

“From that day mortal, and this happie state

Shalt loose, expell’d from hence into a world

Of woe and sorrow.” 

In terms of redundancy of language, we have phrases such as “difficult dilemma”, “direct confrontation”, and “end result”. 

There are terms that seem redundant, but are not for legal or academic reasons.  Examples include terms such as “added bonus”, where the implication is that this bonus is in addition to other benefits already given, or “free gift” where the implication is that there are no terms and conditions attached.  They have become established conventions in language.