Archive for the ‘Redundancy’ Category

No redundo

June 27, 2023

This is about the expression return again, as in the title of my 6/26/23 posting. You might have suspected that the expression is often pleonastic / redundant (for emphasis or clarity), a kind of combo of return and come (back) again: like 3 am in the morning or see with one’s one eyes.

But my title was in fact about returning a second time — my second return home from SUMC within a few days. And it turns out that the expression almost always is used for a second, or repeat, return. Not redundantly at all.

A further example: the hymn Return Again (SH335, that is, on page 335 of the (1991) Denson revision of The Sacred Harp, a standard collection of shapenote hymns). (more…)

Posted in Language and religion, Music, My life, Redundancy | Leave a Comment »

Matters poblano

August 1, 2015

Following on my posting about the noun rajas, notably in rajas con crema ‘poblano (pepper) slices with cream’, there’s some unfinished business involving the word poblano.

One, recipes for this dish go back and forth between referring to the peppers as poblanos and poblano peppers. (Similarly in Mexican Spanish: poblanos vs. chiles poblanos). Some people judge the latter variants to be redundant, like Weimaraner dog instead of just Weimaraner.

Two, where does the word poblano come from?

Three, how does mole poblano, the sauce, fit into this picture.

And four, what does any of this have to do with Spanish pueblo ‘town, village’, and the Pueblo communities of Native Americans in the Southwestern U.S.?

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Names, Redundancy, Truncation | Leave a Comment »