Tautophrase

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A tautophrase is a phrase or sentence that tautologically defines a term by repeating that term. The word was coined in 2006 by William Safire in The New York Times.

Examples include:

• "Brexit means Brexit" (Theresa May)
• "Tomorrow is tomorrow" (Sophocles' Antigone)
• "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" (Gertrude Stein)
• "It is what it is"
• "If it works, it works"
• "Boys will be boys"
• "A win is a win"
• "A la guerre comme à la guerre" — A French phrase literally meaning "at war as at war", and figuratively roughly equivalent to the English phrase "All's fair in love and war"
• Qué será, será or Che será, será — English loan from Spanish and Italian respectively (although these phrases are ungrammatical in those languages), meaning "Whatever will be, will be."
• "Call a spade a spade"
• "When I fool around, I don't fool around."

See also

• Ploce (figure of speech) – Rhetorical device
• Repetition (rhetorical device) – Poetic device
• Tautology (language) – In literary criticism, repeating an idea
• Platitude – Trite, prosaic, or cliché truism
• Thought-terminating cliché – Commonly used phrase used to quell cognitive dissonance
• Recursive acronym – Acronym whose expansion includes a copy of itself

References

• Safire, William (2006). "On language: Tautophrases". The New York Times, May 7, 2006.

• Safire, William (2006). "Tautophrases: what they are". The New York Times, May 7, 2006.

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