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.