Tautophrase
Appearance
A tautophrase is a phrase or sentence that tautologically defines a term by repeating that term. The word was coined in 2006 by William Safire in The New York Times.
Examples include:
- "Brexit means Brexit" (Theresa May)
- "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" (John Wayne)
- "It ain't over 'till it's over" (Yogi Berra)
- "What's done is done" (Shakespeare's Macbeth)
- "Tomorrow is tomorrow" (Antigone (Sophocles))
- "A rose is a rose is a rose" (Gertrude Stein)
- "A man's a man for a' that" (Robert Burns)
- "Facts are facts"
- "Enough is enough"
- "Let bygones be bygones"
- "A deal is a deal is a deal"
- "Once it's gone, it's gone"
- "It is what it is"
- "If it works, it works"
- "If you know, you know"
- "Boys will be boys"
- "A win is a win"
- "You do you"
- "A la guerre comme à la guerre" — A French phrase literally meaning "at war as at war", and figuratively roughly equivalent to the English phrase "All's fair in love and war"
- Qué será, será or Che será, será — English loan from Spanish and Italian respectively (although these phrases are ungrammatical in those languages), meaning "Whatever will be, will be."
- "Call a spade a spade"
- "Once you’re committed, you’re committed"
- "What will be, will be"
- "What wins out wins out"
- "I don’t care how much you know, if you get caught in a fire, you’re caught in a fire"
- "Game is game"
- "Nothing changes if nothing changes"
See also
[edit]- Ploce (figure of speech) – Rhetorical device
- Repetition (rhetorical device) – Poetic device
- Tautology (language) – In literary criticism, repeating an idea
- Platitude – Trite, prosaic, or cliché truism
- Thought-terminating cliché – Commonly used phrase used to quell cognitive dissonance
References
[edit]- Safire, William (2006). "On language: Tautophrases" The New York Times, May 7, 2006.