- Today's Word
Tautological
taw-tuh-LAW-jih-kul
Definition
(adjective) Expressing the same idea twice in different words without adding any new information or meaning.
Example
The policy document was so tautological it took three readings to realize it had never actually said anything — each clause restating the previous one in marginally different language.
Word Origin
Tautological derives from the Greek tautologia, meaning “saying the same thing” — built from tauto- (“the same”) and logos (“word” or “reason”). It entered English in the 16th century through rhetoric and logic, where tautology described a specific formal error: constructing an argument that proves itself by simply restating its own premise. In everyday use it expanded to describe any statement that says something twice — “free gift,” “past history,” “ATM machine” — the second element adding nothing the first hadn’t already established.
Fun Fact
Tautologies are everywhere in everyday language — so common that linguists have a specific term for the most entrenched ones: pleonasms. “PIN number,” “LCD display,” “HIV virus,” and “SAT test” are all tautological acronym redundancies so embedded in usage that correcting them sounds pedantic rather than accurate. The phenomenon is widespread enough to have its own acronym: RAS syndrome — Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome — which is itself tautological, making it one of the more self-aware pieces of linguistic terminology in common use.
