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View synonyms for tautological

tautological

[ tawt-l-oj-i-kuhl ]

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 Words From

  • tau·to·log·i·cal·ly tau·tol·o·gous·ly adverb
  • non·tau·to·log·i·cal adjective
  • non·tau·to·log·i·cal·ly adverb
  • un·tau·to·log·i·cal adjective
  • un·tau·to·log·i·cal·ly adverb
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Word History and Origins

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Example Sentences

A tautological sentence, perhaps, but one that nevertheless needs to be repeated and understood.

The tautological blame always comes back to the claim that frivolous or even fraudulent lawsuits are commonplace.

There is the tautological talker, or the human self-repeater.

It is called vulgar in English; and indeed the addition of here or there is generally tautological.

But the painter sometimes signed his name Franciscus Francia, a form which on Morelli's hypothesis would be tautological.

Therefore they give to the world the wholly vacuous, or merely tautological theory of causation—viz.

But at once we perceive that this is a tautological expression, for what I please to do is simply what I choose.

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tautogtautologism