"_sum total_"

[geoffrey nunberg]

It should be noted that 'sum total' enters the lg in the early 15th c. as the translation of Lat. 'summa totalis',  "the total amount (of things capable of numeration)" (OED).  'Total' doesn't appear as a noun in the sense "The aggregate, the whole sum or amount" until more than a century later. So at its inception, in any event, 'sum total' wasn't redundant, and wouldn't have been perceived as such until 'total' was reanalyzed as the NP head and 'sum' as what Mary Haas called a restricated modifier, like the first term in 'pitch dark,' 'sopping wet',  'brand new,' etc. Presumably, that wouldn't have happened until people no longer associated the phrase with a Latin source.

I wonder if charging that 'sum total' is redundant would place one in the awkward position of having to explain why 'summa totalis' isn't.

Geoff


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