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What is pleonasm and redundancy?

Pleonasm is a linguistic construction that consists in adding more words or expressions than necessary to a sentence making it redundant since its meaning implicit or explicit within the sentence. It tends to appear most frequently in spoken than in written language. Among the most common examples of pleonasm we can find: fall down, cooperate together, to see with his/her own eyes. In these cases, it is clear that these words are not necessary to understand the meaning of the sentences.

The fact that its use is erroneous it does not mean that sometines cannot be used to emphasize and give expression to what is being said or as a literary device in literature. This is mainly because what differs pleonasm from redundancy, while the first is a rethorical device, the second is considered a mistake.

Other examples of pleonasm or redundancy are:

• Volcanic lava
• Both of these two
• Shut your mouth
• Eat food
• Exact same/ Exact duplicate
• Actual fact
• Personal opinion
• Cash money