As a former bookseller, the oft-heard phrase ISBN number sent an irksome chill up my spine.* As a former bookseller, I was often grumped upon overhearing the phrase ISBN number. Now I have a word for that bugbear:

Redundonym: the use of an acronym followed by a word that is actually a part of the acronym. Examples include ATM machine, GRE exam, HIV virus, PIN number, and UPS service.

Got any to add to the list?
Apparently SAT test is exempt:

A former redundonym, SAT test, however, is no longer a redundonym. In 1997 the College Board, the company that administers the exam, announced that “SAT is not an initialism… The SAT has become the trademark; it doesn’t stand for anything.”

from The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn
*Commenter JME wins the Find the Hidden Grammatical Error Prize!

56 replies on “Wordz”

  5. I know “Irregardless” doesn’t really fit the bill, but let’s hate on it, anyway. What an idiotic non-word.

    I also worked at Borders for a while. Barf.

  7. Hi there, nice to meet. Question- Does “RSVP Please!” bother you? I tend to cut people a little slack on that one, because of the French…

  10. “Despite” falls into the same category as “irregardless” as a non redundonym but very annoying non-word.

    “SAT test” has always grated on my nerves. I’m a little disappointed that I can no longer feel slightly superior to those that use the phrase.

  12. I took an exemption test at college for a computer course that asked me which device from the list would have a GUI interface. It also made reference to the LAN network.

    I’d like to think I could have pointed these errors out to the proctor and gotten my exemption, but apparently it doesn’t work that way.

  13. It sounds to me like the SAT people probably started claiming those letters no longer stand for anything as a means of dodging all the pointed questions about what exactly it measured (“aptitude?” At what? Taking the SAT?) and exactly how standardized it truly is.

    As a little kid I thought it was a foreshortening of “Saturday” because that’s when my older brother had to go take it — as opposed to the Fri Test or the Mon Test, I guess.

  16. @7 Yeah, I’d cut slack for “RSVP Please,” though it reveals ignorance of the referent (or a prediction of the recipient’s ignorance). Context is also important&#8212I’m not into enforcing grammar/style in ridiculous, inapplicable contexts (like casual speech). “ISBN number” was painfully necessary when speaking to a customer who would be confounded by “ISBN.”

    @8 True; WET does a nice job of avoiding that by referring to itself as “The Ensemble.”

    @9 Thanks! I’m loving the discussion of semantic and syntactic pleonasm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonasm).

    A nonacronym pleonasm that I hear all the time is “Where are you at?”

  24. Jesse —

    Are there style rules that cover this? Or is this just a pet peeve?

    As a layman, it seems to me that it’s only a “redundonym” is the words behind the acronym are common knowledge — and even then it’s population dependent.

    “HIV virus” in general publication? Big deal. “HIV virus” at a conference of health professionals. Grammatical boo-boo.

    “ISDN number” to a book store customer? Clarifies intent. “ISDN number” in the Amazon shipping department? Bad grammar.

    It’d seem the more general an audience, the higher tolerance for these pet peeves.

  26. @23 The distinction isn’t cut-and-dried:

    Some authorities reserve acronym for those initialisms that are pronounced as words, rather than as a series of letters. Thus HIV, DNA, and AIDS are all initialisms, but only the last is an acronym. In general usage, however, acronym is used to denote both groups.

    from (The Copyeditor’s Handbook)
    Even the dictionary definition isn’t restrictive to pronunciation.

  28. Hi Jesse! I was going to say WHO THE FUCK IS JESSE VERNON? but I see someone beat me to it. Darn.

    I don’t have anything to add to the list, but I’m wondering: did the phrase “ISBN number” grump upon you? Sounds painful.

  30. @22 Then you likely would have joined my French boss in complaining whenever the cafeteria at work served “chicken coq au vin”.

    @10 “Actually” is another non-word. Years ago I had to consciously purge it from my vocabulary when I realized I’d somehow gotten in the habit of using it about 5 times per sentence.

  31. @24 It totally depends on context: published material vs. speech, specialized audience vs. general public, etc. If you are bookseller and you ask a customer for the “ISBN” of the title they are looking for, chances are they will become confused or frustrated, making you a shitty bookseller (you gotta adapt, even when it’s annoying).
    Re: HIV, to prevent the frustration of informed readers, as well as educate the uninformed, one could write “Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)” and then use “HIV” henceforth.
    Stylewise, “unless they emphasize a key point or provide a bit of relief in a patch of extremely dense text,” redundancies of all sorts should be avoided (CH). And redundonyms are the most clear-cut because they are a literal duplication.

  34. @28 Meesh! I was hesitant to introduce my precise vocabulary, but “grump” best captures the feeling. grumping: the state of being slightly bothered, upset, angry, annoyed, sad, etc. The demonstrative emphasis of the word is more on the force of the feeling than the specific denotation, though it is always slightly negative.
    In this case, “grumped” is a predicate adjective followed by the adverb “upon.” “Upon” modifies the words following, not “grumped.”
    Wow, it’s time for sleep. Hi!

  36. Hey Good Lord, I have done a little research on this.

    And, in response to your comment I did a little more. I probably should have been more clear in saying that that *despite* is often used as a synonym for “in spite of” which was not its original meaning and it is unnecessary bc it is used the same way.

    If that is not what your research shows, either we are looking at different internet sites or you are an English language expert (which I am not).

  37. Jesse @ 34, while I still enjoy the image of someone being “grumped upon,” I of course bow down to you. You are the sovereign of syntax and sentence style!

    Sleep sounds wonderful.

    Bye!

  38. I’ll definitely agree with you that there are dual meanings of the word despite. I’ll also agree that it has changed from it’s one original meaning to the more common usage. That being said, it’s still a valid word and one definition of despite is in spite of.

  41. TCBY yogurt
    KFC chicken
    (you may have to live in a special part of hell/the midwest to hear those)

    not to be a dick (on no dick day), but “tuna fish”, “rio grande river”, et al are not redundonyms, tho they are redundant. there are countless other such stupid phrasings, like puppy dog & kitty cat

  51. I had a boyfriend who wanted to strangle anybody who said “ATM machine”.

    I learned quick.

    I’m guilty of “ISBN number”, I think.

    I don’t care about such things. I understand that this makes me bad and stupid. I’m ok with that.

  56. How about the person, so often described in the press, who “owns his own business,” as opposed, it seems, to the one who owns someone else’s business?

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