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

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:33 AM -0500 2/14/11, Ronald Butters wrote:
>or "tiny little" or "big fat" or (used to be) "happy and gay" or
>"dead body" -- the redundancy is emphatic/intensifying

Some of these are less redundant than others.  To say that Robin's
body is more attractive than his/her face is not to say that Robin's
dead body is more attractive than his/her face.  Now "dead corpse"
would be redundant, but "dead body" ain't necessarily so.  (For
example, I often feel as though my body is falling apart, but if I
felt as though my dead body were doing so I'd really be in bad shape.)

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

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