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stranger
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By the literal meaning, "free gift" is a pleonasm, but as the word is actually used, a free gift is distinct from a gift. Anywhere I have seen the phrase, the recipient had to pay for a "free gift".
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Yes but I think that is just clever marketing on behalf of the store supplying a 'free gift' whereas the actual term gift is indeed given freely and so free gift is a pleonasm...it has just become vitiated by those out to gain ownership of your money
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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a free gift is distinct from a gift.
Yes, in some societies, including ours, gifts are anything but "free". There is a complicated system of reciprocity to take heed of. Originally, there was nothing in the word gift than meant "without cost to the recipient" or "without the obligation of reciprocity", it is merely an abstract noun based on the verb "to give". It is interesting that the German cognate word Gift means poison, and the Greek word (whence our English dose) had the meaning of a quantity of beneficial drug versus a dose of poison. In the end, a gift is something given.
And, as has been pointed out occasionally on these boards, redundancy is not a bug in language, but a feature.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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I like that idea that we always have to pay for "free gifts".
As a child in Germany, we had a word for pleonasm: doppelt gemoppelt - which is something like "double done" - only better.
And then my older brother, who was privileged by learning ancient Greek in school, cam home one day and taught his little sisters that the better word to use was "pleonasm".
Now, many years later and books in English, I still prefer doppelt gemoppelt - and would like a colorful word like that in my new language.
Alexa Fleckenstein M., physician, author.
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----please, draw me a sheep----
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"Pleonasm is often used for emphasis, as in free gift, true fact, or revert back. While such repetition is discouraged, sometimes it becomes part of the language and is used idiomatically, as in a hot water heater."
Would that be idiomatically or idiotically? A "hot water heater" should be a superheater to produce steam but invariably seems to be in some (idiot's) home whenever mentioned. [It does seem like the season for the Grinch to appear even on AWAD.]
ÅΓª╥┐↕§
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Super Duper, Aramis. It's freezing cold here. Gotta love that hot water heater designed by knowledgeable experts.
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Hot water heater is not really a pleonasm. There can be heaters that heat other things than water. And heaters that heat water but do not produce hot water. Heat tape, e.g., is a water heater but all it does to the water is keep it from freezing.
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Aramis!! I just thinking about you yesterday, and missing you! [HUG]
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missing people? wasn't there someone called Pook here also
missing?
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Oh, yes--Pookie! I believe he got lost to Facebook. I miss him, too.
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----please, draw me a sheep----
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Pooh-Bah
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Originally Posted By: beck123 in anagrams IV
SCUBA
just catching up on the posts I missed and wanted to comment on this one...S.C.U.B.A (originally an acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus)...and so may be considered a 'pleonasm' when teamed with tanks as in 'scuba tanks'.
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Jackie! Baybee!! 
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Hot water heater is not really a pleonasm. There can be heaters that heat other things than water. And heaters that heat water but do not produce hot water. Heat tape, e.g., is a water heater but all it does to the water is keep it from freezing. Hey Fal  It is not the "water" part that is the problem in that. It would also sound lame but make more sense to say "hot water maker". Function is not the issue. A water cooler does not necessarily cool water but (hopefully) no one says "cold water cooler" or "frozen ice machine". "Fatuous pleonasm is, hrmm." -Yoda
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"frozen ice machine" gets 92,800 ghits.
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"frozen ice machine" gets 92,800 ghits.
The thing I find interesting about pleonasmata is how popular they are and why. Of course, the folks who disparage them and their use are upset, but most of the language-speaking world is blithe to their existence. But redundancy is not something bad in language. In fact, there are many instances of redundancy that don't set the normative grammarians off like a cheap fourth of July firecracker. Concord between different constituents in a sentence is something that is good and grammatical and must-needs be upheld.
And other languages display it to a greater extent than English. Adjectives in Russian, German, and Latin have to agree with the noun they qualify in number, gender, and case. This bluntly put is pleonasm. The information is thus encoded lover several words. Of course, there is a benefit to this, especially in the case case: i.e., it's easier to move words around in a sentence or phrase. For example, in English the nature of things and the things of nature have two different meanings, but in Latin de rerum natura and de natura rerum can only mean the 'nature of things'. In fact, this sample phrase illustrates how Latin is capable of splitting prepositional phrases without the risk of unmeaning.
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Let's not forget ATM machines and PIN numbers. (For anyone who may not know these Americanisms, ATM stands for automated teller machine, and PIN is personal identification number.)
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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'?
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There's also, e.g., an ATM card, so ATM has taken on a meaning beyond its literal expansion.
Not to mention that titmouse is a pleonasm, deriving as it does from the Old Norsetittr, 'titmouse' and the Old English mase, 'titmouse'.
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Pooh-Bah
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There's also, e.g., an ATM card, so ATM has taken on a meaning beyond its literal expansion.
correct...as has SCUBA.
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this is where Faldo steps in and proclaims "redundantism is your friend", or somesuch.
Talk about a mantle of chopped liver invisibility. And what have I been on in this very same thread?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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My favourite pleonasm has to be a place calle Haughurst Hill.
A 'haugh', in Old English means 'hill' and 'hurst' means 'wood'.
Therefore 'Haughurst' means 'wooded hill' or ' wood on a hill'.
However, over time the residents have obviously forgotton this and renamed 'Haughurst' as 'Haughurst Hill' and thus it becomes 'wooded hill hill' or 'wood on a hill hill'.
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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Pooh-Bah
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Have you sent that in for this weeks competition Bex...with picture, its sure to be a winner 
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Pooh-Bah
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WOW...900 entries (and mine didn't even get a mention) this was winner..... AWAD mail Mine in case you wondered was.... How people say baby then follow with the young of animal, ie baby cub (bear) baby foal (horse) or baby joey (kangaroo). Their name already describes them as being the young of the animal. Kylie Kwong is a popular Australian television chef, author and restaurateur and her recipe for Braised Moroccan-style Lamb Shanks calls for the use of 'baby lamb shanks'.
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baby cub (bear) baby foal (horse) or baby joey (kangaroo). Their name already describes them as being the young of the animal.
Yes, but a baby lamb is younger than a lamb, just like a baby is younger than a youth.
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Have you sent that in for this weeks competition Bex...with picture, its sure to be a winner No I didn't...I totally forgot about the competition! woops!
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from a bexter link in the acronyms thread:
Some lexicographic wit coined a term for what’s happened to laser, radar, and their ilk: they’ve become anacronyms, a neologism that smooshes the sounds (and the meanings) of acronym and anachronism. The product of smooshing two words together, by the way, is a portmanteau.
When an acronym becomes an anacronym, funny things can happen to it. For one, people sometimes start saying the acronym coupled with the verbalization of one of its constituent elements. Hence in ”SCSI interface,” the word ”interface” is completely redundant, because that’s what the ”I” is for.
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following up on myself, I see that anacronym actually has an OLI of seven(7).
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When an acronym becomes an anacronym, funny things can happen to it.
They can suffer from RAS Syndrome
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When an acronym (or initialism) becomes commonly used it gets applied to other things than the thing it originally meant. That's kind of a awkward way of saying it, but an example would be something like USB bus, where the B in USB means 'bus'. You can also have USB connectors, or USB cables so saying USB all by itself is kind of missing something. In this case I would maintain that the redundancy of USB bus adds something to the understandability of the term. The same is true of ATM machine, since you can have ATM cards. Other so-called pleonasms such as PIN number clear up any ambiguity with 'pin' or even, in some dialects, 'pen'.
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Ah, but if you just say ATM, everybody knows you mean the machine.
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Well, depending on the context. On the other hand, if you say ATM machine everyone knows what you mean, too. I'm just saying that if you say ATM card you've divorced the initialism just that little bit away from the literal expansion. ATM starts to stand for the whole complex of which the machine is just one part.
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What is the inherent problem with pleonasms? In the ATM case (which I originally learned as an initialism for Asynchronous Transfer Mode) nobody would say automated teller machine machine (except jocularly), but something in a person's language instinct drives them to say ATM machine. It could be as Faldo suggests to try and resolve some possible ambiguity, which case works well for PIN. Sometimes a redundancy is just a redundancy.
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We don't seem to have the ATM machine problem over here...cash machine is used instead...I remember when I first heard the ATM acronym used by a Canadian friend who needed to get some money from one and looking stupidly at her wondering how she would go about getting money from Air Traffic Management before she explained that her ATM acronym stood for Automated Teller Machine...
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>Sometimes a redundancy is just a redundancy.
and sometimes it really isn't needed (context). you're standing next to the teller's window in a bank, wanting to withdraw some cash (say you can't abide the ATMs (cash machines) in the lobby), and he asks you to enter your PIN into his little PIN-receptor device. do you do as he asks, or do you stare at him in total befuddlement? only once, at most, I wager.
-ron o.
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do you do as he asks, or do you stare at him in total befuddlement? only once, at most, I wager.
It's hard to say. PIN number may have changed its meaning in contexts other than this. It might be that a bank employee might say "enter your PIN" at that point. I believe I have heard that in the wild, but i could be wrong.
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(I believe I have heard that in the wild, but i could be wrong.
The little EFTPOS machines visually ask you to enter your PIN. So someone has knowingly discarded the redundancy.
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at my bank, when you make a deposit (say checks), and you want some cash back, the human teller usually says "enter your PIN, please."
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So someone has knowingly discarded the redundancy.
Yes, but it's probably because the peevers have raised a stink. Who knows what folks say when they're off the job and talking about ATM PINs.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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