Entertainment / Literature / Pleonasm: A habit of speech or writing in which an idea repeats itself in a single sentence, i.e., a redundancy. For example, 'tiny little town' is a pleonasm, as opposed to 'tiny town' or 'little town.' Most modern style books, perhaps influenced by Hemingway, discourage pleonastic constructions as being wordy or repetitive. I also steer students away from them. However, pleonasms have been fashionable in other centuries. Geoffrey of Vinsauf favored them in his twelfth-century style manual, the Poetria Nova. The New Testament book of Mark happily used them, as David Smith points out (8). Consider Mark 13:33, 'Blepete, agrupneite!' (Watch out! Be aware!') in which the author emphasizes alertness by using a pleonasm.
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