Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From John McIntyre on Facebook today:

— JM: Today’s Pleonasm Award goes to outlets that referred to Thomas Jacob Sanford, who attacked the Mormon church in Michigan, as an armed gunman.

My response:

— AZ > JM: armed gunman could have an appositive modifier, reminding readers that gunmen are armed, and suggesting that this fact is especially salient in the context; see my 12/18/24 posting “boneless bananas“, with links to pilotless drones and other modifiers that might be being used appositively (rather than restrictively / intersectively). The larger point is that redundant material can be serving a useful discourse purpose.

There’s also the possibility that gunman is to be understood as denoting a role rather than a providing a description — denoting someone whose occupation is as a gunman for some organization, but who might well not carry a gun when he’s off-duty. So when he’s off-duty, he’s an unarmed gunman; when he’s on-duty, he carries his gun, and then he’s an armed gunman.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2025 at 11:43 am and is filed under Context, Modification, Redundancy, Relativization, Usage advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.