Opposite of "oxymoron"

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, February 12, 2002 11:47 am -0500 Patti Kurtz
<pkurtz at HEIDELBERG.EDU> wrote:

> Hi.  Some colleagues of mine in the English department are curious as to
> whether a term exists for word pairs that are the opposite of oxymoron--
> that is, instead of contradictory, they mean the  same thing but are used
> together, like "puppy dog" and "kitty cat."

Yes, it's a pleonasm.  (Or you could just call it 'redundant'.)  They're
certainly not limited to baby-talk.

On a vaguely related note:  There's a long-running correspondence in the
back pages of New Scientist about redundant acronym-noun combinations,
which they've named 'RAS Syndrome'--i.e., Redundant Acronym Syndrome
Syndrome.  An example found on Linguist List:  HPSG grammar (i.e.
head-driven phrase structure grammar grammar).


Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320