Do you make these pleonasms?

Who said that the genius of French never commits pleonasm?

"Tennis court", "another alternative", "collaborate together"... A number of redundant formulas are known to pepper our daily conversations.

They are easily correctable.

But some words in our vocabulary are also subject to repetition.

They are difficult to replace as their anchoring in the language of Molière is solid.

do you know them?

To discover

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• Today

Before adopting the form we know of “today”, “au jour de hui” appears in the 12th century.

We find the formula in several writings such as the

and the

, a poem composed by the trouvère Cuvelier.

As we read in the

, the old French "hui" is borrowed from the Latin "hoodie".

It means "on this day".

The reinforcement of “today” by the word “day” in our locution makes “today” a pleonasm: “the day of the present day”.

Italian (“oggi”) and Spanish (“hoy”) having retained the Latin form of the term, this is a French exception.

• Commit suicide

"This starving Russian, almost his neighbour, who, having become a labourer, had committed suicide one day in too great misery, and whose wife, mad with rage, had slapped the corpse, abandoned him", we read in La

Condition

( 1933).

In writing this, was Malraux knowingly making the mistake?

Coined from the noun "homicide" ("action of killing a human being"), the pronominal verb "to commit suicide" implies redundancy.

Already in the 18th century, “suicide” designated

As explained by the French Academy, the term is rare and discussed until the beginning of the 19th century and it is preferred "homicidal self".

"Suicide" (which contains the genitive "sui", "of oneself") then becomes an intransitive verb meaning "to kill oneself voluntarily".

Also, the addition of the reflexive pronoun “se” makes this verb a pleonasm.

Read alsoFive (unsuspected) pleonas that must be avoided at all costs

• Werewolf

Derived from the Old Low Frankish "werwolf", which itself comes from the Old High German "werwolf", i.e. the combination of the words "wer" ("man") and "wolf" ("wolf"), the "were" means "man-wolf".

Also called "garol" or "garval", the word appears in the 11th century in French to qualify the man who temporarily transforms into a wolf.

A metamorphosis that irrigates the popular imagination and contributes to many legends.

This is how, in the 16th century, the "werewolf" (which literally means the "wolf-man-wolf") becomes a "spirit that frightens little children".

• Azure blue

Its name qualifies the color of the sea, of a silk garment, sometimes of a look.

It is clear that "azure blue" is a phrase in common use.

From the Arabic “laazaward”, taken from the Persian “laazward”, the word “azur” arrived in French via the medieval Latin “azurium” to designate the azure stone, known as “lapis lazuli”.

By analogy, the word "azure" came to designate the color of an intense blue.

wrote Maupassant in 1882, in

.

The contemporary use of “azure blue”, as one would say “sky blue”, is a pleonasm in the sense that “azure” can only be blue.