Tuesday, August 27, 2013

word of the day: pleonastic

context: "[I]t was then that I perceived my future in a strange backward glance … [A]n account of the next two weeks of our stay in Positano seems pleonastic and irrelevant."

definition from Princeton's WordNet: repetition of same sense in different words; example sentence: "`a true fact' and `a free gift' are pleonastic expressions"; synonyms: redundant, tautological

my thoughts: it wasn't easy to give this word context as the context sufficient to garner meaning fills up a page or more. Our hero meets a girl and instantly develops an intense infatuation. She never reciprocates. The two weeks he and his father spend visiting with the girl's family merely play out the details of what our narrator recognized in essence at the moment of introduction - his overwhelming desire and her chipper indifference.

source:The Worst Intentions a novel by Alessandro Piperno, translated by Ann Goldstein

No comments: