tautological

American  

[tawt-l-oj-i-kuhl] / ˌtɔt lˈɒdʒ ɪ kəl /

Also tautologous sometimes tautologic

adjective

1. (of a phrase) needlessly repetitive without adding information or clarity.

   Third-world communist regimes, with tautological insistence, call themselves "people's democracies."

2. (especially in logic) defined in terms of itself.

   Some would argue that the phrase ''survival of the fittest'' is tautological, in that the fittest are defined as those that survive to reproduce.

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Other Word Forms

• nontautological adjective
• nontautologically adverb
• tautologically adverb
• tautologously adverb
• untautological adjective
• untautologically adverb

Etymology

Origin of tautological

tautolog(y) ( def. ) + -ical ( def. )

Example Sentences

Attempting to define this unique, curvilinear object is a tautological exercise.

From Los Angeles Times

“That’s almost tautological,” Weiss said, because rising prices for oil and other commodities are often some of the main reasons for inflation spikes.

From Seattle Times

“In fact, the genre people call self-help literature sounds tautological to me; I read all literature as self-help.”

From New York Times

Begging the question actually means posing or answering a question in a circular or tautological manner; your conclusion is foregone.

From Scientific American

FINA’s argument that, to its “best knowledge, the athletes competing at such international events never used,” nor required, “caps of such size and configuration” is infuriatingly tautological.

From Washington Post