Definition of Tautology

tautology (noun) - (logic) a statement that is necessarily true

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How can tautology be used in a sentence?

  1. Roberts spouted a tautology which is uninformative.

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  2. No dirt, no "vetting," the perfect cynical tautology.

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  3. Digital download? isnt that what they call a tautology?

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  4. (This is a tautology comparable to hating social climbers.)

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  5. The problem is that the word 'tautology' has a pejorative meaning.

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  6. That is not a tautology, that is just being confused and contradictary

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  7. I think you need to look up the word 'tautology' in a dictionary, Iain.

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  8. - Isn't Oliver Kamm reviewing a book by Nick Cohen some kind of tautology?

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  9. It may seem like a tautology but the U.S. is starving for a popular President.

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  10. Oh, and 'tautology' or 'tautological' is used in two other places in that piece.

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  11. Queen's heads, over their own -- an odd kind of tautology, whenever they sit there!

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  12. A tautology is a logical fact, one that is independent of any empirical observation.

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  13. One of his rules, though, starts off sounding like a tautology but turns out not to be:

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  14. Will someone please explain to Egnor that a tautology is a kind of statement, not a kind of concept?

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  15. DOBBS: That's the kind of tautology that scares the dickens out of me coming from a government official.

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  16. It is a tautology to elucidate the merits of allocating part of those funds to social and economic needs at home.

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  17. This is the logical notion of tautology, which is very different from the way the term tautology is used in stylistics

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  18. Fallows 'scary tautology paints online media more as a religious mystery than an exercise in communication and commerce.

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  19. Yet he's only an entertainer: not a saviour of the masses or a crazed dictator (if you'll pardon the possible tautology).

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  20. The term is often reduced to the unhelpful tautology that emerging markets are "emerging" because they have not "emerged."

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  21. A "tautology" is essentially using different words to say the same thing - even if the repetition does not provide clarity.

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  22. It's only a tautology is you pretend life and niches don't have distinguishable properties and that a niche can't be populated.

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  23. Several times in the book he expresses his loathing of fanaticism, especially religious fanaticism, which in his account is a tautology.

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  24. We should likewise be aware of tautology, which is a repetition of the same word or thought, or the use of many similar words or thoughts.

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  25. Going off to find yourself isn't a new idea and in this age of sophisticated marketing techniques "spiritual journey" is almost a tautology.

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  26. And to say so is not to engage in tautology, which I think you were referring to, Andrew, when you made that remark about philosophy classes.

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  27. In fact, all he proved was a tautology: Self-identified conservatives have conservative views, while self-identified liberals have liberal views.

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  28. He has the knack -- I'd say the gift -- of getting well under the skin of the smug, the stupid and (I apologize for the tautology) the right-wing.

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  29. What can we utter or express greater of the vast distance between God and man, than by a kind of tautology to say, that God is God, and man is man!

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  30. Mr. CRONIN: Head of the CIA saying if the Afghan Security Forces can provide security it's a tautology then we will have a good chance of succeeding.

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  31. By your facile tautology, I could tell you that I am omnipotent God and as such I have chosen to hide from you the evidence of my transcendent almightiness --

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  32. Now I could defend high modernism from your 'modern art is meaningless and something meaningless isn't art' tautology, meaningless according to whom, kemo sabe?

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  33. In 1977, some Nazi lowlifes (excuse the tautology) decided to organize a march through Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where a number of elderly Holocaust survivors were living.

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  34. Further, Professor Lessig carefully phrases this argument to deny that there will be an incentive to "create" works that have already been created - which makes his argument sound like a tautology.

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  35. Well I certainly hope you are not an arts student nor a graduate for that matter, as a tautology is a repetition of meaning, ie saying the same thing twice, whereas an oxymoron is a phrase conveying contradictory meanings.

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  36. Inasmuch as part of the job of a representative or senator is to pursue the interests of his own state, to say that congressmen are "more interested in serving special interest groups" than "the American people" verges on tautology.

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  37. "Note to subs" (sub-editors), it said: "In the isiZulu culture, married or adult women whose surnames begin with 'Ma' automatically inherit the prefix 'Ka' instead of 'Ma' to avoid tautology, which is why Ms. Madiba-Zuma is not referred to as 'MaMadiba'."

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  38. "tautology," she wrote that officials "abdicated their Congressionally-mandated obligation" to evaluate environmental impacts and "ignored (without sufficient explanation) substantial information in the administrative record concerning environmental impacts" of the rule.

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  39. Fine-tuning can be dismissed as a tautology of course life arises only under conditions conducive to life, it can be embraced as an argument for a Creator, it can be seen as a series of signposts directing scientists to the deepest, least understood logic of the universe.

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  40. It is curious that Shakespeare has ridiculed in Justice Shallow, who was 'in some authority under the king', that disposition to unmeaning tautology which is the regal infirmity of later times, and which, it may be supposed, he acquired from talking to his cousin Silence, and receiving no answers.

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  41. The Constitution has giving (sic) us an amazingly valuable governing principle and institution that this Constitution provides us with (tautology), checks and balances and limited government with enumerated powers and an independent judiciary and states (lack of punctuation) rights as protected under the 10th amendment.

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  42. This unmanly dread of simplicity, and of what is called "tautology," gives rise to a patchwork made up of scraps of poetic quotations, unmeaning periphrases, and would-be humorous circumlocutions, -- a style of all styles perhaps the most objectionable and offensive, which may be known and avoided by the name of _Fine Writing_.

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Tips for Using tautology in a Sentence

You may have an easier time writing sentences with tautology if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.

Frequent Predecessors

Words that often come before tautology in sentences. For example: "a tautology" or "the tautology"

  • a
  • the
  • of
  • mere
  • and
  • this
  • to
  • empty
  • is
  • or

Frequent Successors

Words that often come after tautology in sentences. For example: "tautology ." or "tautology is"

  • .
  • is
  • of
  • and
  • that
  • in
  • to
  • or
  • which
  • if

Associated Words

Words that aren't necessarily predecessors or successors, but are often found in the same sentence.

  • propositional
  • sequent
  • propositions
  • boolean
  • contradiction
  • logically
  • valuation
  • negation
  • logic
  • synonyms

Alternate Definitions

  • tautology (noun) - useless repetition
  • tautology (noun) - repetition of the same word, or use of several words conveying the same idea, in the same immediate context. see <internalxref urlencoded="dilogy">dilogy</internalxref>
  • tautology (noun) - the repetition of the same thing in different words; the useless repetition of the same idea or meaning: as, “they did it successively one after the other”; “both simultaneously made their appearance at one and the same time.”
  • tautology (noun) - <strong>synonyms</strong> <em>redundancy</em>, etc. see <internalxref urlencoded="pleonasm">pleonasm</internalxref>
  • tautology (noun) - a repetition of the same meaning in different words; needless repetition of an idea in different words or phrases; a representation of anything as the cause, condition, or consequence of itself, as in the following lines: -- the dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, and heavily in clouds brings on the day. addison
A sentence using tautology