The word redundant has one positive meaning when used to describe duplicate components in a system that can prevent failure of a system upon the failure of a single component. That almost sounds redundant! Redundant words are used all the time without even thinking. I heard a tv weather forecaster say, “Temperatures will be seasonal for this time of year”. How many times have you heard someone say, “7 am tomorrow morning”? Or, “I’ll have a tuna fish sandwich”. How about, “What an unexpected surprise”? I think most of us sometimes suffer from RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome). A person will say, “I have to pop by an ATM machine (Automated Teller Machine machine) on the way home. Some other examples of redundancy would be, “final outcome”, “end result”, “join together”, “red in colour”, “round in shape”, “written down”, “new innovations”, “true fact”, “suddenly exploded”, “false pretense”, “visible to the eye”, “past experience”, “predict in advance”, “free gift”, “completely full”, “postpone until later” . In my “personal opinion”, these phrases are redundant, wordy, superfluous and verbose. Now, considering the time, I won’t be excessively repetitive to the point of being repetitively excessive in the interest of time before they make me the head of the department of redundancy department.
That’s Coffeetalk. I’m Vic Dubois.