Paging All Youse Grammar Police - HELP!
 

Hi all !

Here is a sentence from an Agatha Christie novel [referring to the properties of Curare]:

"It is a very swift and rapid poison"

What is the grammatical term for using two adjectives with identical meaning in the same sentence? Stoat and I can't think of the term, and it's driving us insane.

So I googled it, and the answer is "tautology".

Bum, why couldn't we find that ?

thank you so much - you're been beneficially helpfully of use to us !! :D

I'm trying to think of some minute sliver of distinction between the words "swift" and "rapid".

I suppose a poison could be swift to be absorbed into the blood stream but slow to act on the system... So in this case it would be swift to be absorbed and quick to act.

Another word that comes to mind is "redundant"

Redundant and repetitive.

I have another grammar question. One of our more annoying directors sent out a banal Thanksgiving e-mail last week which included this sentence:

"Perhaps all of us can get passed the big dinner and look forward for the opportunities ahead to be grateful."

Am I correct in thinking he should have used "past" instead of "passed"? Or is that a perfectly cromulent sentence?

Past.

Unless he was hoping someone would pass the entire dinner to him from the other end of the table.

Thank you for the confirmation.

Which would be an opportunity to be grateful, in my book.

Yes, it should have been past.

This thread embiggens my grammar doings.

And if you want some information on how you'd know:

"Passed" is always a verb ("I passed the car" "he passed away").

Past can be a noun ("I knew him in the past") and adverb ("he drove past me"), and adjective ("the past events were a success") or as a preposition ("the high school is down the road just past the convenience store"). But not a verb.

In your sentence, "passed" is used as a preposition. Which means it should be "past."

DeSean Jackson of the Eagles said that it's "unpossible" to cover him with one defensive back.


Maybe it's a fortune cookie calling for a happy and safe post-Thanksgiving, uh, movement.

Passed/past isn't the only grammar error in his sentence.

I would have said "Perhaps we can all get past the big dinner, and look forward to the opportunities for being grateful that lie ahead.

"small bird" vs. "rough patch of river"

Perhaps it is a poison that both kills birds and dissolves rocks.

The comma is unnecessary.

::shudder::

Unnecessary, but not out of line.

I love grammar!

Here's one I thought some might appreciate.

Err, you did something wrong with your attachment. Tried to fix it, but didn't work.

I fixed it. I tried something new, and it showed in preview and after the post as okay; not sure what happened.

Weird

It showed for you because the image was in your cache.

The way you to do what you were trying to do is to upload the file, then come back to the editing box and click the drop down arrow next to the paperclip icon. Click on the image name and it will insert the correct tag for you.

That made me totally LOL. I may have to repost that sentiment at some point...

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but.
 

Had to share - and this is a better forum that FB just because.

Number 14 should read "Fvck profanity!"

I love number 15, and number 20 because I LOVE the passive voice and have always been graded down because of it. Fvck you, English teacher!!

I use passive voice when I want to avoid using "they" as a singular non-gender-specific pronoun.