Talk:Pleonasm

Ommission of the Subject in English

"In contrast, formal English requires an overt subject in each clause."

This may be broadly true of formal English, but there are lots of valid examples:

"Love you." "Come here." "Don't breathe"

It's very frequent in imperstive or declarative sentences as above. It is sldo often the case in subsidiary clauses where the subject is implicit:

"I'm not coming to work today, feeling a bit ill." 80.5.7.242 (talk) 18:20, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

A matter of emphasis

If the use of a potentially pleonastic word changes the emphasis, is it still considered a pleonasm? The article currently includes "This particular item" vs. "This item", but to me its just like the difference between "I do care" and "I care". The middle word in the first of each pair does not change the meaning, other than in terms of emphasis, but it does change the emphasis. I guess my question is, why does the article mention the "particular" pair but not the "do" pair? —Quantling (talk | contribs) 23:16, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Tuna revisited and other bad examples

I removed a couple of bad examples from Pleonasm § Idiomatic expressions before coming here and realizing that this has apparently been discussed many times (above at Talk:Pleonasm#Tuna and in the archive at Talk:Pleonasm/Archive 1#Redundancy examples. I've only skimmed the most recent discussion and did not (yet) look back at the article history to see exactly how tuna fish was described at various points over the last 20+ years when this has been discussed.

Anyway, the passage I edited read: Some pleonastic phrases are part of a language's idiom, such as tuna fish, chain mail and safe haven in American English. They are so common that their use is unremarkable for native speakers, although in many cases the redundancy can be dropped with no loss of meaning. I removed tuna fish and chain mail but left safe haven.

I see two separate questions at play. First, whether these are technically pleonasms. Second, whether it is true that in many cases the redundancy can be dropped with no loss of meaning. The biggest problem is with the second question. Chain mail means something quite distinct from either chain or mail on their own. Is there any serious debate about this? I learned after Googling this that mail derives from French maille meaning mesh or similar. That's fascinating, but this is a rather uncommon meaning of mail today. People like to argue about tuna fish but in at least some varieties of American English this refers exclusively to canned tuna (and things like tuna salad made from it) and rarely or never to the animal or other preparations of tuna as food. I think most readers can grasp why tuna fish would be considered a pleonasm but it is not true that there is no loss of meaning when fish is omitted.

If we're going to provide examples, ideally they should be straightforward and uncontroversial. Examples that are borderline, non-obvious, regional, or controversial require some explanation. Sources would be good. Perhaps tuna fish ought to be addressed but not in the way it was most recently.

For those interested, here is a five minute discussion of tuna fish with Anne Curzan. —Myceteae‍🌈 (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

The solution is plain and simple: use only examples from WP:RS about pleonasm.--Altenmann >talk 04:43, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I have a similar issue with "Independent Journalist" - to my mind, it serves a distinction between a freelancer and one affiliated to a news org, and isn't a good example. ~2026-36617-88 (talk) 00:45, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

I removed "independent journalist". —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 00:46, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

And I removed the whole enchilada of tuna fish altogether as a questionable original research. Don't ask me what was wrong there; just give us the references.--Altenmann >talk 01:27, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm good with that. I had left the remaining tuna fish content because it at least engaged with objections to the classification as pleonasm, but it was unsourced and weirdly formatted (not unlike the rest of the article) so I'm happy to have it gone. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:43, 7 July 2026 (UTC)