As a copywriter, this is something I have to deal with Every. Single. Day. No, it’s not a nasty disease – a pleonasm is a redundant word or phrase. So it’s basically when people use more words than they need to. Here are some examples:
future prospects (because prospects are always in the future)
a true fact (facts are, by definition, true)
free gift (because you never pay for a gift).
One of my pet hates is ‘in order to’ – you can just say ‘to’. Always. Go on, try it.
The word ‘pleonasm’ has been around for four centuries, and it comes from the Greek pleonazein, which means ‘to be excessive’ (from pleiōn or pleōn, meaning ‘more’).
Pleonasms are similar to tautologies, which is when you repeat the same thing in a slightly different way. Like ‘In my opinion, I think’ and ‘please RSVP’. In fact, it’s so similar that I’m not entirely sure what the difference is… From what I can work out by reading things on the internet, all tautologies are pleonasms but not all pleonasms are tautologies. But then my head exploded so I stopped looking.
Here are some other words for being overly wordy, almost all of which sound like they could also be medical conditions and/or STIs: garrulous, verbose, logorrhea, prolix and periphrasis.