ESL Blogs

Tautology is a complicated term that means saying the same thing twice. It's considered bad use of language.

Unfortunately, however, there are numbers of word pairs that are tautologies that have crept into common use. Here are some examples:

Swap out - this seems to be more commonly used in US English. Swap means to change something. I often read the term "swap out" as in, he said he would swap out the batteries so the torch would work. Swap would have done fine alone.

Sort out - we can sort something without the out. Out doesn't add anything to the word which means to place something in order eg, alphabetic order.

Together with - as a recruitment manager I often read job advertisements asking people to send "their application, together with a resume."

These terms become "hackneyed" or overused, and when readers read them, they think they are correct, so they use them in their own writing.

Are you aware of any other tautologies? See how many you can find in articles you read. Most importantly, don't use tautologies in your written or spoken English.

saying of the same thing twice over in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style