Two-word tautologies

[MoleAtTheCounter]

Past history
Free gift
Aromatic smell
Mass exodus (a BBC favourite)

Please post more examples.

Fair enough.

Or just fair. I mean if it's fair then surely enough is implied? Or does fairness exist in degrees? And who is to say what amount of fairness is enough?

@MorrisZapp I don't know! Fair enough has always baffled me.

Collaborating together

Revert back.

Some great examples here. But after a lifeime of despising 'very unique' I had an epiphany a few years ago and decided it was fine.

Something can be unique in just one respect (say, being the only cat with seven legs) or it can be unique in many respects (say, being the only cat with seven legs, the only cat that speaks French and the only cat that supports Manchester United).

A cat who is unique in multiple respects could reasonably be called 'very unique', or 'more unique' than a cat that is only unique in one respect.

What do you reckon? Acceptable or not?

I, personally

Also, things can be unique in ways that are incidental to what they are or in ways that are absolutely core to what they are. I'm a unique person in that no one else in the world has my national insurance number. But, arguably, Shakespeare was more unique than me because no one else in the world has his talent as a dramatist

Oh god "revert back" is hideous.

Of course there are intensifiers - the problem (for pedants like me) is some people don't know the difference between "strikingly similar" and "the exact same"

@Random789 I think I disagree.
No one knows who was as capable as Shakespeare but didn't have the time or education or interest to write those plays.

But I suspect I'm quibbling because "unique individual" is one of my rage-inducing phrases.

A pandemic is an epidemic crossing international borders. It may not (or not yet) be present on every continent, so this is not tautological.

Grammatically, no. As I said upthread "unique" is an extreme adjective so can only be modified with another extreme. ("totally unique" for example- though that would then fit in with our tautological list!)

@Random789 , William Shakespeare was as unique as you are. Unique is an absolute.

Completely perfect. Perfect literally means ‘complete’

AM In the morning

Chai tea

[on the train] "We are approaching our final destination"

What other sort can there be?

'Aromatic smell' isn't really a tautology. In this context, 'aromatic' describes a particular type of smell. You could use the word 'aroma' alone, I suppose. But 'aromatic' has meanings apart from smell.

And

Salsa sauce

A subset of the two word tautology

There can degrees of inaccuracy. To quote the Big Bang theory "It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge."

Global pandemic. I was watching the Lewis capaldi documentary last night and the kept saying it. Drove me mad

Pandemics can be at country level.

I don't know why but I completely HATE this.

A good argument but I remain of the opinion that something is either unique or not unique.

In the cat example, I'd use the wording similar to that used in your second paragraph - 'the cat has many unique features' or, if comparing, 'the French-speaking cat has a greater number of unique features than the seven-legged cat'.

Work colleague.

Agree about global pandemic not being tautological.

hermetically sealed.