Thursday, January 19, 2006

Pleonastasy

Okay, I don't know if that's a word, but apparently "pleonasm" and "pleonastic" are. Pleonasm means: the use of more words than are required to express an idea.

Hannah has a hand-gesture -- an impatient circular motion -- that means: get on with it, get to the point.

My children occasionally used to interrupt me with "Too much explaining, Daddy."

Today I was informed by a colleague that if I were African and had a secret name that only God & my close friends knew, that name would be Pleonasm.

The only conclusion that makes sense to me is that everyone around me is delusional. That's what makes sense. They just don't see things clearly. That's all I can think of -- that they don't really know what's going on. They're confused. Why else would they say those things? I'm pretty sure that's it, that they aren't in touch with reality. You know what I mean?

4 Comments:

At Thu Jan 19, 02:54:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

okay, this is *too* good! (btw, this colleague sounds like me but much smarter!) i can hazard a guess that YOU would say the same thing about MY emails and voice-mails!

also, i looked up "pleonasm" in answers.com and one of the definitions (medical) is: "an excess in the number or size of parts". now *that* could sound rather boastful.

 
At Thu Jan 19, 08:19:00 PM PST, Blogger Stephanie said...

Some people just don't appreciate complexity!

 
At Sat Jan 21, 02:19:00 AM PST, Blogger Erik said...

this post rules. by the way-if you were african, i might actually believe you...you know, about that other thing? that si was talking about?

yeah, that one. i'm not buying it. :)

 
At Sat Jan 21, 11:39:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

erik: i kind of had to make up to bryan for my "too much truck" comment in a previous post (menace II to society). it also fits in w/the "insincere" flattery post too. ;-)

bryan: not quite apropos of this post but the "non-fortune" that i received in my fortune cookie recently was -- "your persistence brings you credibility." thought you would find this slightly amusing (didn't say you would agree -- just find amusing). maybe replace "persistence" with "importunateness" -- i would still not be credible but it would better fit our on-going "argument"...

 

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