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“Superfluous” is not a dental ritual

By Ed Goldman

Redundant power—a backup source in case of a blackout—is good. Redundant phrases, however, are annoying.

One of the funnier examples of those is saying that you work for the Department of Redundancy Department. But there are others we deploy regularly that may not be as obvious.

For instance, when we say we’re lifting up or tamping down something. Of course we are. Who lifts down or tamps up?

When we ask someone to bring something here, “here” is a stowaway that needn’t be in that sentence because nobody “brings“ something there. We may “take” it there—but we never take something “here”, unless we’re demonstrating our mettle and saying that whatever comes our way (here) we can “take it.”

Right now you may be thinking, “This guy has too much time on his hands.” That itself is redundant. You could have ended the sentence with “time.” And “that itself” is repetitive.

The Googleverse and mysterious galaxy known as Artificial Intelligence teem with redundancies—which is only natural because in everyday speech, which is what each service tries to deliver its answers in, so do we.

Some phrases they seem to get a kick out of are “end result” (because a result rarely comes at the onset of something, unless you’re fudging a research paper) and “free gift” (since if it’s a “gift” it’s got to be free. Unless it’s the gift of gab, which takes a toll on its target audience. Even “target audience” has become redundant).

My favorite redundant term when I worked for city government was “pre-planning.” This means, I’ve often pointed out, planning how to plan one’s plans. Sounds a bit like wearing suspenders and a belt at the same time or wearing a watch on your wrist but also on a cool fob —not unlike carrying a “re-insurance policy.”

I suppose at the start of this column I should have provided “advance warning” of what its subject matter was going to be, so you wouldn’t receive an “unexpected surprise” when it turned out to be just that. (All warnings are made in advance and all surprises are unexpected.) And as an “added bonus” I should have noted the column would contain no “new innovations” “during the course of” your reading experience, even though I try to make “each and every” one of these unique.

I was sitting in my backyard not long ago and smelled a skunk in “close proximity.” That called for a swift response. Had the skunk smelled as though it were in “distant” proximity, I’d have allowed myself more time to run indoors and slam every window and door I could.

If we know that an ATM is an automated teller machine, why do we still call it an “ATM machine”? And would you call what I just told you an “actual fact”?

When you suggest to an office mate that you’d like to “collaborate together” on a project, aren’t you being a tad superfluous? And if you say the project’s deadline is “12 midnight,” are you forgetting that midnight always arrives at 12?

In Sacramento County we have a road called “El Camino Highway,” which loosely translates as “the highway highway.” That sentence also implies that other terms might translate tightly as something.

More than once in the past 13 years, I’ve been introduced as “a single bachelor” and was recently asked to meet someone at “11 a.m. in the morning.” Last year, a magazine editor asked me to drive to the Sierra foothills to write about a “burning fire,” which I believe is the only kind of fire there is.