I am what I am ....

[Charles Doyle]

A good many proverbs, in addition to "Let bygones be bygones" and one or two others that Safire quoted, appear (on the "surface") to be tautological propositions or mere assertions of identities (of course, they aren't really):  "Business is business"; "A deal (bargain) is a deal (bargain)"; "Boys will be boys"; "When you've got to go, you've got to go"; et al.

--Charlie



---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:42:08 -0400
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>)
>
>On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 9:08 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>Is there a technical term for such silly phrases?  Of course, the end of the
>>>statement is "a yam."
>>
>> Tautologies, I suppose.
>
>Safire called them tautophrases.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_safire.html
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>

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