Words & WritingGreek → English
Tautology
/tɔːˈtɒlədʒi/noun
The saying of the same thing twice in different words, or a statement true by its own form.
The Greek roots
ταὐτό
tautó
the same thing
λόγος
lógos
word, statement
Literally: “saying the same”
The story of the word
The Greek first element is a contraction of to auto, the same, and rhetoricians used tautologia as a name for a fault of style. Logicians rescued it: after Wittgenstein's Tractatus in 1921, a tautology is a proposition true under every assignment of values, and saying nothing is precisely the point. A free gift is the everyday kind.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
tautonymlogicanalogy
In a sentence
Advance planning is a tautology, since you cannot plan backwards.