Pleonasm

//ˈpliː.əˌnæz.əm// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Redundancy in wording. rhetoric, uncountable

    "St. Jerome and St. Augustine are both sparing in the employment of the device of pleonasm."

  2. 2
    using more words than necessary wordnet
  3. 3
    A phrase involving pleonasm; a phrase containing one or more words which are redundant because their meaning is expressed elsewhere in the phrase. countable

Synonyms

All synonyms
abundanceamplitudecircumlocutionduplicationembellishmentexpletive

Example

More examples

"A black darkness is an example of a pleonasm."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Late Latin pleonasmus, from Ancient Greek πλεονασμός (pleonasmós), from πλεονάζω (pleonázō, “to be superfluous”), from πλείων (pleíōn, “more”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.