Pleonasm
The use of more words than strictly necessary — sometimes an error, sometimes a deliberate figure of emphasis.
Pleonasm, from the Greek for 'more than enough', is the use of redundant words to express an idea that could be expressed more briefly. 'Free gift', 'past history', 'safe haven', 'I saw it with my own eyes' — each contains a word or phrase that adds no new information to what the surrounding words already convey.
As a stylistic vice, pleonasm is what copy editors spend most of their afternoons removing. Padding weakens sentences by burying the working words in filler, and disciplined prose (Strunk and White, Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language') treats it as a moral failing as well as an aesthetic one.
As a rhetorical figure, however, pleonasm has an honourable history. 'I saw it with my own eyes' is stronger than 'I saw it' because the redundancy insists on the witnessing; 'a true and faithful account' has been standard legal language for centuries because the doubling closes interpretive gaps. In liturgy and oratory, pleonasm produces solemnity — the extra words slow the reader down.
Common mistake: assuming every doubling is a fault. The test is whether the redundancy does rhetorical work. If it emphasises, ritualises, or forecloses ambiguity, it earns its place. If it only adds syllables, it is padding and should be cut.
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
Keep reading the glossary
Saying the same thing twice in different words — sometimes a fault, sometimes a device.
Deliberate exaggeration for effect — not meant to be taken literally.
The immediate repetition of a word for emotional emphasis, without any intervening word.
A phrase or quote so overused that it has lost most of its force.