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stranger
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Today's quote, "Like a horny sightless woman on a blind date, she begins to knead her heavy friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Leptorrhine nose ... kumquat-headed ...'", contains a pleonasm.
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Carpal Tunnel
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----please, draw me a sheep----
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old hand
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Well spotted 
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Well spotted Dunno. Leptorhine is an adjective and lepto- is a combining form. You can't really say "Like a horny sightless woman on a blind date, she begins to knead her heavy friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Leptorrhine ... kumquat-headed ...'" or "... friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Lepto nose ... kumquat-headed ...'" As for instances of ATM without the machine or PIN without the number, sure you'll run into those in the wild. They don't make ATM machine or PIN number wrong even if context makes it clear what you're talking about without the machine or number. Even with context there can be confusion. Teller at the bank, helping a confused customer with his ATM card: "Do you have your PIN?" Customer: "Yes ma'am. Rat cheer in mah pocket. It's a BIC."
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Rat Ahem. That should be raht. Rat is pronounced ray-ut.
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I'm spelling using SWE conventions. If I'd meant it to be pronounced ray-ut I'd've spelled it ray-ut.
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and if I'd've meant PIN to be pronounced 'pen'.. well, I didn't, because it's just not, here.
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The argument that there's other ways of saying it without confusion so the way you're saying it is wrong is a non-starter. There's always other ways of saying it.
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Nobody has said yet what exactly is wrong with redundancy. It seems useful to me. Sometimes its inflectional concord between words (which is a requirement of some languages and its absence would signal a grammatical error); sometimes it's for rhetorical effect (and we're all for that where and when appropriate); sometimes it's to avoid ambiguity (which seems a good thing, too); and sometimes it's something which annoys a select group of speakers (who usually seem wrong about other aspects of language, so I'd say it's something to do with them and not the language)..
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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This subject came up in the context of pilotless drones back almost 4 years ago on Language Log. They do a pretty good job of discussing the nature of modification.
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stranger
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I know I should have entered this in the pleonasm contest, but I am new here.
My least favorite pleonasm is do do, as in; .....and when they do do that.........
When is it ever necessary to use two do's, except for when speaking to or about pets? And then, why not just call it what it is?
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----please, draw me a sheep----
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Pooh-Bah
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I know I should have entered this in the pleonasm contest, but I am new here.
As you might of read..there were so many entries, anyway you still have posted it here.
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I know I should have entered this in the pleonasm contest, but I am new here.
My least favorite pleonasm is do do, as in; .....and when they do do that.........
When is it ever necessary to use two do's, except for when speaking to or about pets? And then, why not just call it what it is? This structure is generally used when explicitly contrasting with someone's not doing something. E.g.: When they don't do their homework their grades in the class suffer, but when they do do their homework they generally learn more and get more benefit from the class.
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another good example:
"We thought ethically people would never do that, but now we know that they do do this."
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old hand
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Do what you do, do well, boy
Do what you do, do well
Give your love and all of your heart
And do what you do, do well
Ned Miller
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Nobody has said yet what exactly is wrong with redundancy. It seems useful to me. Sometimes its inflectional concord between words (which is a requirement of some languages and its absence would signal a grammatical error); sometimes it's for rhetorical effect (and we're all for that where and when appropriate); sometimes it's to avoid ambiguity (which seems a good thing, too); and sometimes it's something which annoys a select group of speakers (who usually seem wrong about other aspects of language, so I'd say it's something to do with them and not the language).. What is wrong with it, besides lack of dignity, is that it escalates, driving the world closer to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Babblers so enamored of their own voices that they cannot be bothered to recall what acronyms mean perpetuate these things and even try to justify it with "all the other 'tards say it that way". One of the most intelligent characters in television was made to sound like a total dolt by saying "OCD disorder". And yes, at least one viewer noticed. It is time to declare Pleonasm Jihad!
ÅΓª╥┐↕§
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It is time to declare Pleonasm Jihad!
You need to take a stress pill, man. I appreciate the humor, but it is almost AWOL. The thing is, language changes, and nobody can stop it. Nobody spells radar, laser, or scuba as acronyms any more. And English is no worse the wear for it. Good luck on your jihad; maybe you'll learn something new on the trip ...
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Me, I don't care for pleonasms. I've always had a weak spot for the contradictio interminis. I like the irony and sometimes cynism that is attached to it.
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What would holiday cheer be without Aramis the Intolerant’s Grinch counter to Fal the Coddler? Those de-volved acronyms (one really from RaDAR) are not so troublesome. But real acronyms mean what they mean, in any context. If SAM is not clear enough and additional wind is so gratifying, by all means one should utter “SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILE”. Part of the tragedy is that some of those should never have been invented, particularly with a last letter denoting System, Program, Syndrome, Card, and most of all Number. The banking industry should have gone with PID. 
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>What would holiday cheer be without Aramis the Intolerant’s Grinch counter to Fal the Coddler? say, do you suppose that A. is onto something here, and that zmj and Fal really are the same person?!  - joe (talk about your tautologies) friday
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and that zmj and Fal really are the same person?!
That would explain their bicoasted personas, the fact that none have seen them together (even once), and that Faldo has pulled more than one practical joke on me. OTOH, I was thinking that A. might be a sock-puppet of Dahil.
zmj (the man who was his own nuncle) aldo
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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What is wrong with it, besides lack of dignity, is that it escalates, driving the world closer to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.
Ah! The good old slippery slope argument. If we stop with the agreement between adjective and noun in case, gender, and number pretty soon we'll all be speaking Ffrenche.
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old hand
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Rats! Or rayuts! I could have bet my bottom dollar (it's good I don't have one) that jheem-s and tsu-s were one (of a kind).
- ron(shame on you, sherlock) obvious
Eta: well, what the fudge do I know, anyway?
Last edited by Avy; 12/21/2010 3:56 AM.
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A. might be a sock-puppet While having met neither in person, I'd bet a smallish amount of money that they're not.
I'll tell you-all what: make me The Supreme Universal Word Mistress (NOOOOOOOOOOO, not tsuwm's!!!) and all disagreements will be settled by me. No discussion or ripostes; my word will be grammatical law. For the world. [gracious bow e]
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Pooh-Bah
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I'll vote for that Jackie.
BUT WAit......one question first. Are you female?
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Pooh-Bah
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The thing is, language changes and nobody can stop it.
Like the Thought for the Day.... AWAD... yesterday! Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961) I liked that.
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I'll vote for that Jackie.
BUT WAit......one question first. Are you female? yes, she is!
formerly known as etaoin...
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this is where Faldo steps in and proclaims "redundantism is your friend", or somesuch. does *anyone go around saying 'AT machines' or (expecially) 'PI numbers'? “AT machine” would be wonderful, a victory to intolerant prescriptivists everywhere. It could be like a small Chinese man stopping a tank, lighting a tiny candle in the dumbing-down darkness descending on the world. Then “ATMM” could have a real meaning, perhaps an auto-teller maintenance robot or a corrupt political organization that controls bank equipment. Just have the intellectual starch to know what you are saying; that is all we at the IPS are asking. And we are ready to appoint Jackie Supreme Leader.
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Are you female? Yes, I are. And a bit square, too. (Thanks, Buffle.)
And thanks to others also for the tone of recent posts becoming lighter. :-)
Perhaps I should note here that when I make "profound" (flat) declarations like "Ah, but if you just say ATM, everybody knows you mean the machine.", there is a 99.99% probability that they were tongue-in-cheek.
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Just have the intellectual starch to know what you are saying; that is all we at the IPS are asking.
Not only do I know what I'm saying when I say "PIN" or "ATM", but I also know what folks mean when they say "PIN number" or "ATM machine". You know you could just start shooting people who don't speak as you would have them. After a while that would solve the problem. Of course, the overly corrected could start shooting back. Then your grammato-jihad would be in full swing. A what a semantic paradise.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Can I shoot the people who say "titmouse"?
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Can I shoot the people who say "titmouse"?
Now you're getting into the spirit of the angry vulgus nobile of POed normative grammarians. Shooting's too good for the folks who use annoying constructions.
First they shot the people who said "ATM machine", and I did nothing. Next they came for the people who said "air" for err, and I did nothing. Finally they came for me, because I pronounced distributed with the accent on the second syllable instead of the first (à la RP in excelsis), and nobody was left to speak the language, and the peevers would not speak to one another because they did not approve of the contradictory shibboleths and quibbles of their fellow grammaticasters, so they sat around, tongued-tied in damp silence.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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First they shot the people who said "ATM machine", and I did nothing. Next they came for the people who said "air" for err, and I did nothing. Finally they came for me, because I pronounced distributed with the accent on the second syllable instead of the first (à la RP in excelsis), and nobody was left to speak the language, and the peevers would not speak to one another because they did not approve of the contradictory shibboleths and quibbles of their fellow grammaticasters, so they sat around, tongued-tied in damp silence. /bow
formerly known as etaoin...
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Does anyone else see it as a malignant spoonerism?
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Does anyone else see it as a malignant spoonerism?
What? Neoplasm?
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BTW, all y'all that are fighting against the use of the phrase "ATM machine" would appear to be fighting a will-o-the-wisp.
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Ah but that only covers books and anyone writing a book and including ATM machine are sure to be corrected by their editors. What Ngram doesn't take into account is day to day speech, which is where ATM machine crops up the most...
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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Unless it's fiction and the author is representing the speech of normal type folks.
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stranger
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Thanks for the info.............
People to conquer victory. gclub in Singapore, most people will be born a tiger. Tiger will be suppressed because the lion in gclub.
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