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For example: "I could tell he had had a great time at the circus."

If you're not repeating the word for emphasis, is there a term for the sequential usage, other than "coincidence"?

tchrist
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Samuel Hulick
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    That one is just the past perfect. But there are eleven hads here, and even Wikipedia doesn't have a name for it. It's certainly not "coincidence" though. I'd call it "contrivance". – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 05:18
  • Do you have any more examples other than "had had"? – Hugo Oct 31 '11 at 06:50
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    @Hugo something like "She didn't know that that dog was dangerous" would fit, it seems. –  Oct 31 '11 at 07:04
  • Is 'isisism' an accepted term yet? – Mitch Oct 31 '11 at 12:26
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    @FumbleFingers it is perfectly possible to construct an arbitrarily long repetition with valid English. Consider a sign about a store that said "Smith, and, Jones." I write: "There is no comma between Smith and and and and and Jones." But then you question my punctuation and ask: "Isn't there a comma between Smith and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and Jones?" And I can reciprocate by questioning your punctuation. Insanity ensues. And, yes, I think contrivance would be the mot juste. – Fraser Orr Oct 31 '11 at 14:30
  • @Fraser Orr: Argghhh! Trying to decode that one is the lexical / semantic equivalent of an ear worm! As soon as you think you've parsed it at one level, you're tempted to nest it and try again. Repeating ad infinitum or ad nauseum, depending which comes first! – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 16:29
  • @onomatomaniak: I don't think that that that really means anything different to that (in that example, as opposed to this one! :) – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 16:32
  • There's repetition for emphasis, and there's repetition by quoting (the "and and and..." example). I assume you're asking about grammatical acceptable repetition? 'had had' for past perfect, and 'that that' for e relative clause introduction followed by a pronoun are what you're interested in? – Mitch Oct 31 '11 at 18:58
  • Another example: Never never means never in affairs of the heart. –  Nov 06 '12 at 19:47
  • They would be a subset of what are known as "dittograms". – AmI Sep 12 '18 at 00:29

6 Answers6

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Tautonym, like Vulpes Vulpes, for red fox?

Dan
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Contrastive focus reduplication. " I like you, but I don't (like) like you."

Shane
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    That's certainly one good example of the phenomenon (and you also give a nice example), but contrastive focus reduplication (eg 'coffee coffee' has been specifically covered here elsewhere. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 07 '15 at 15:27
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Could it be termed a composite phrase? The French or Latin origin means "to put together". Composite implies joining. It's the first word that came to mind when reading a news article tonight and noticing unnecessary duplication of the word "that".

KAN
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EDITED

You might call this a homonymic phrase (or compound).

Since homonyms are words that sound the same (or are spelled the same) this might be a proper term do describe a phrase, or a part of a phrase, that includes them.

Reading through the closest article to the subject, that I could find in wikipedia did not reveal any specific terms that would cover this scenario.

Unreason
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  • I down voted because you said it was epizeuxis, and then you corrected yourself and said that it wasn't (because the author said it was a grammatical structure not for emphasis.) I'd be happy to reverse if you edit to correct. – Fraser Orr Oct 31 '11 at 14:21
  • @FraserOrr, I was not clear - in rhetoric consecutively repeating the words is called epizeuxis. However, that is really a sidenote and not related to what OP asks, so I removed it. – Unreason Oct 31 '11 at 14:36
  • fair enough, I reversed my downvote. – Fraser Orr Oct 31 '11 at 16:55
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There are plenty of contrived sentences allowing anything up to an infinite number of repetitions, but no-one has actually given an example where repeating a word serves to emphasise anything. So how about...

Me: I can see the appeal of Polanski's films if you're a paedophile.

You: I like Polanski's films, but I'm not a paedophile!

Me: I didn't mean you you. I mean if someone else was a paedophile.

Okay, maybe not the best example. But I do think it conveys emphasis.

Community
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FumbleFingers
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You can occasionally repeat a word for emphasis, usually in speech; for example:

She looked over her shoulder and said: 'He's very, very good ...'

But you can't repeat adjectives for emphasis; for example:

a red, red cloth

Is incorrect; whilst

a very red cloth

is fine. However, it is doable in certain languages, for examlle - Bengali; the forner translates as

lal (red), lal (red) kapor (cloth)

It's where the double not for emphases not comes from. I don't know the grammatical term that describes this, but there is likely to be one.

Mozibur Ullah
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