"The _sum total_ of the world's knowledge: 250 exabytes"

[Ronald Butters]

or "tiny little" or "big fat" or (used to be) "happy and gay" or "dead body" -- the redundancy is emphatic/intensifying


On Feb 13, 2011, at 3:27 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> I wonder why this redundant term, an annoyance to prescriptivists
> since I was in grade school During The War, has become immortal,
> unkillable, whereas similarly-redundant terms of common occurrence in,
> e.g. my native dialect, such as _dusk dark_ and _clay dirt_, are
> unknown outside of the South.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org