Redundant, of course, means "excessive, superfluous; characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition" (and how about those two n's, two s's and two ti's in "unnecessary repetition"?). This month, of course, is the year's redundant month, when you have to write two 11's every time you date something (and let's not even mention the arrival in a few days of the sure to be overhyped 11/11/11 [is that a threedundancy?]). Maybe my fondness for the particular word today stems from my early morning voting experience. Being a part-Irishman who spent part of his life in Chicago, I've long possessed some weird, maybe natured/nurtured desire to just once vote several times in one day (outside of a poll worker loudly telling everyone in the cramped, small room not to vote a certain way on a certain state issue because it would do away with "Obamacare," my voting experience was pleasantly rapid and garnered me not one but [see the pattern taking root?] two "I Voted Today" stickers [which both lost their stickiness about five minutes later]).
Later in the day somebody's phone went off with the distinct ringtone of "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius." I know like 40 years ago the song was a bit redundant, but not having heard the song for something like, oh, 39 years, I kind of grooved to it. I looked up and spied the twelve people or so in the vicinity. Before I could make an educated guess as to whose phone it might be, the one genuine hippie in the crowd opened his phone up and started talking. Now I don't like trafficking in stereotypes, but I believe this guy would self-describe himself (Bingo!) proudly as a hippie. Not some nouveau, look at my store-bought $50 tye-dye, but the real thing, going on 45 years in the club. Anyway, I know it doesn't quite fit the definition, but all I could think of when Hippie Apotheosis Man's phone went off singing "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" was, "that's kind of redundant." Now I know you can have all sorts of different ringtones for all sorts of different people who might call you, and that "Aquarius" might not be Hippie Apotheosis Man's "default" ringtone, but come on, unless Marilyn McCoo or Billy Davis Jr. is a personal friends of his, I've got to suspect "Aquarius" is in fact Hippie Apotheosis Man's default ringtone. Which is perfectly fine, and it sure beats "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)," it just seems, well, redundant.
So I'm thinking about redundant all day and of course at some time I fixate on the re- part and I start to wonder whether there's a word dundant out there (along the lines of the reiterate/iterate thing, where reiterate is in fact a bona fide redundancy); if redundant is superfluous, maybe dundant is just right. Sounds like it, doesn't it? Dundant=doned it. "Don't sweep the floor, dude! That would be redundant since I already doned it." But no, a little research taught me that redundant comes from the Latin word redundare (to flow back, overflow, be excessive). The really interesting thing is that it all starts with the Latin word unda, a wave. Which of course is only too perfect. An early Latin guy, charged with coming up with words for all sorts of things, takes his assistant along with him to the beach. They see waves--though of course don't know what they're called just yet, that being their job--think they're cool, and the guy sends the assistant out to the surf to test them out. The assistant wades out, is exhilarated by the experience, waves (not a redundancy, a whole other word, a moving of one's hand in genial greeting), and shouts to his boss, "So what are you gonna call them?" Just then a big white-cap totally swarms the poor assistant. "Unda, what else?" the boss shrugs his shoulders and picks up some weedy stuff soon to be named kelp.
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