A breathless journalist on our local TV channel news was talking about the intruder who gained entry into the White House recently. In the course of her excited explanation she referred to a canine dog that patrols the grounds. A slip of the tongue? It got me thinking of other redundant pairings of words that might be used:

a bovine cow, a porcine pig, a feline cat, a pachydermic elephant?

My two personal dislikes are the use of the word “disinterested” when they mean “uninterested”. Disinterested means they don’t have a horse in the race and don’t mind one way or another. The other infuriating word is “utilization” when the Anglo-Saxons, bless them, bequeathed to us the simple word “use”.

We have a wonderful language, with a reputed 1,025,109.8 words available to us, according Global Language Monitor, OED and Websters. We should use more of them and use them correctly.

Incidentally, just in case you are wondering where the .8 came from in the number of words (above), it refers to “utilization” which is not really a word, it is a pose.