Learned borrowing from Late Latin pleonasmus, from Ancient Greek πλεονασμός (pleonasmós), from πλεονάζω (pleonázō, “to be superfluous”), from πλείων (pleíōn, “more”).^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈpliː.əˌnæz.əm/

• Audio (Southern England):

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pleonasm (countable and uncountable, plural pleonasms)

1. (uncountable, rhetoric) Redundancy in wording.
   • 1939, John Nicholas Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome, Catholic University of America Press, page 5:

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

   • 1989, Harold Riley, The Making of Mark: An Exploration, Mercer University Press, page 219:

     Indeed, pleonasm, the use of superfluous or redundant words, is only part of the broader features of that style, the expressions of which have been so thoroughly analyzed by Franz Neirynck² and which for convenience will here be referred to as "dualisms."

   • 1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:

     My salvation is in my Saviour who saveth me hence the redundancy and pleonasm of my asseveration.

2. (countable) A phrase involving pleonasm; a phrase containing one or more words which are redundant because their meaning is expressed elsewhere in the phrase.

• ellipsis

• pleonasmic

• circumlocution
• pleonastic

• auxesis
• battology
• perissology
• tautology
• English pleonastic compounds
• Pleonastic compounds by language

• “pleonasm”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
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  pleonasm on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• neoplasm, planemos

Borrowed from French pléonasme.

pleonasm n (plural pleonasme)

1. pleonasm