tautology
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Late Latin tautologia, from Ancient Greek ταυτολογία (tautologia) from ταὐτό (tauto, “the same”) + λόγος (logos, “explanation”)
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Noun
tautology (countable and uncountable; plural tautologies)
- (uncountable) redundant use of words
- It is tautology to say, "Forward Planning".
- (countable) An expression that features tautology.
- The expression "raze to the ground" is a tautology, since the word "raze" includes the notion "to the ground".
- 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy:
- Pure mathematics consists of tautologies, analogous to ‘men are men’, but usually more complicated.
- (countable, logic) A statement that is true for all values of its variables
- Given a Boolean A, "A OR (NOT A)" is a tautology.
- A logical statement which is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is a contingency.
- A tautology can be verified by constructing a truth tree for its negation: if all of the leaf nodes of such truth tree end in X's, then the original (pre-negated) formula is a tautology.
[edit] Antonyms
- (linguistics: expression): contradiction in terms
- (in logic): contradiction
- (literary): oxymoron
[edit] Coordinate terms
- (in logic): contingency, contradiction
[edit] Derived terms
terms derived from tautology (noun)
[edit] Translations
uncountable: redundant use of words
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expression that features tautology
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in logic
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[edit] See also
- pleonasm
- redundancy
tautology on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
