The other day Patricia from Brazil sent me a blog comment with a question. She asked whether a sentence she had written was pleonastic.
Pleonastic?
Leave it to someone from another country to teach me something new about my native language.
I thought I would share Patricia's word with you, my reader, since you are interested in business writing. Do you know what pleonastic means?
It is the adjective form of the noun pleonasm, which is, according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:
The use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense (as in the man he said): REDUNDANCY.
Now you have a new way to complain about redundancy, if you choose to do so, and it's a smug, scholarly sounding way: "That writing is pleonastic," or "This writing suffers from pleonasm!"
Of course, you won't use the word if you want your audience to understand, but you can say it to yourself and smile.
If you would like to share your response to pleonasm or the word pleonastic, I would enjoy hearing from you.
Thank you, Patricia, for expanding my vocabulary! I have passed on the favor.
Lynn
Syntax Training