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In rhetoric, a tautology is an unnecessary (and usually unintentional) repetition of meaning, using different words that effectively say the same thing twice (often originally from different languages).

Tautology, often regarded as a fault of style, was defined by Fowler as "saying the same thing twice". In fact, it is not necessary for the entire meaning of a phrase to be repeated; if a part of the meaning is repeated in such a way that it appears as unintentional or clumsy, then it may be described as tautology. On the other hand, a repetition of meaning which improves the style of a piece of speech or writing is not usually described as tautology, although it may be a logical tautology. Below is a discussion of various patterns of semantic repetition and to what extent they are tautologies.

A common form of tautology is using two forms of the same word in the same construction. E.g., the British supermarket Tesco sells a brand of lemon thyme which it describes as having an "aromatic aroma"^{[citation needed]}. Synonyms may also produce a tautology; "free gift" is tautologous because a gift, by definition, is something given without charge. Other such examples of tautology include "sufficiently adequate", "new innovation". (The latter can be contrasted with "new and improved", which is an oxymoron.) In phrases, tautology is present in sayings such as "I can see it with my own eyes".

Repetitions of meaning sometimes occur when multiple languages are used together, such as "the La Brea Tar Pits" (the The tar Tar Pits), "the hoi polloi" (the the many), "Sierra Nevada mountain range" (Snowy Mountain Range mountain range), "Sahara Desert" (Desert Desert), "shiba inu dog" (small dog dog), "Mississippi River" (River-river river) "cheese quesadilla" (cheese cheesey-thing), Mount Fujiyama (Mount Fuji-mountain), "Lake Tahoe" (Lake Lake), and "Angkor Wat temple" (Angkor Temple temple). Possibly the most extreme example is "Torpenhow Hill" (Hill-hill-hill Hill, in four different languages). "Scientology" similarly combines two tautological multilingual parts, from Latin scientia (science, knowledge) and Ancient Greek logos (science, reason, speech).

The tautological status of these phrases is somewhat subjective and can be harder to detect than monolingual varieties, since they are only perceived as tautologous by people who understand enough of each of the involved languages, and because of the way that words change meaning as they drift from one language to another. For example, chai is Hindi for "tea", but in the United States, where the phrase "chai tea" is common, what is referred to as "chai" is more precisely "Masala chai." "pizza pie" (pizza being the Italian for "pie"), is a similar example, in that "pizza" has come to have a much narrower meaning in English than "pie".

Similar examples of repetitions occur when multiple languages are used in the same geographic area, even when the populations are generally well aware of the meaning of the redundant words. In bilingual (French and English) areas of Canada, for example, people may refer to the "Pont Champlain Bridge" (Bridge Champlain Bridge). Tautologies like these occur more frequently in spoken English when printed materials compress the bilingual presentation (e.g. from the expected "Pont Champlain / Champlain Bridge" to "Pont Champlain Bridge"), a technique commonly used in Canada, New Mexico and other bilingual areas to save space on road signage, grocery packaging, etc. A New Mexico example is the Spanish placename Arroyo del Oso (a ravine running through Albuquerque), known in English as Bear Canyon, but sometimes appearing as "Arroyo del Oso Canyon" (Small-canyon of-the Bear Canyon) or even "Bear Canyon Arroyo" (Bear Canyon Small-canyon).

In some cases an acronym or abbreviation is commonly used in conjunction with a word which is actually part of the shortened form. One of the better known examples of this is "PIN number", which is often used when explaining the concept. Other examples include "MLS listing", ATM machine, RAID array, and "HIV virus". This phenomenon is humorously, self-referentially referred to as RAS syndrome.

For more details on this topic, see RAS syndrome.

A repetition of meaning may be intended to amplify or emphasize a certain aspect of the thing being discussed: for example, a gift is by definition free of charge, but one might talk about a "free gift" to emphasize that there are no hidden obligations, financial or otherwise, or that the gift is being given out of free will. This is related to the rhetorical device of hendiadys, where one concept is expressed through the use of two, for example "goblets and gold" meaning wealth, or "this day and age" to mean the present time. Superficially these expressions may seem tautologous, but they are stylistically sound because the repeated meaning is merely a stylized way to express a single concept.

• United States President George W. Bush, before the Unity Journalists of Color convention on August 6, 2004, is quoted as saying (with regard to Native American tribes), "Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." [1]
• The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution: In New York v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stated, "The Tenth Amendment likewise limits the power of Congress, but this limit is not derived from the text of the Tenth Amendment itself, which, as we have discussed, is essentially a tautology." O'Connor reasoned that the Tenth Amendment simply reiterated what was already built into the structure of the Constitution generally: When the States consented to the Constitution they expressly delegated certain powers to the Federal government. Implicitly, what was not given was necessarily retained by the states.
• The phrase "A is A", borrowed from Aristotle, was a favorite of Ayn Rand. The idea frequently appears in her Objectivist philosophy, especially as written in her novel Atlas Shrugged.
• In his book Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams used the phrase, "Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening happens again, happens again. Though not necessarily in that order."
• In Sunni interpretation of the first half of the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith may be translated as "...there is no god but God." The entire Islamic faith, some Sufis contend, can be derived from the deep contemplation of this apparent tautology. However the shahada is uttered in the Arabic language, fluent speakers of which understand the difference between "god" (Ilah إلاه; often translated as meaning "deity [worthy of worship]") and "God" (Allah الله; the standard Arabic word for "[the one] God").

• English language
• English usage
• Figure of speech
• Fowler's Modern English Usage
• Grammar
• Language
• Law of identity
• List of redundant expressions
• List of tautological place names
• No true Scotsman
• Oxymoron
• Pleonasm
• Redundancy (language)
• Rhetoric
• Vacuous truth

• The Columbia Guide to Standard American English: Tautology
• Figures of Speech: Tautology