Tautology Definition
tô-tŏlə-jē
tautologies
noun
Needless repetition of an idea in different words; redundancy; pleonasm (Ex.: “necessary essentials”)
Webster's New World
An instance of such repetition.
Webster's New World
A proposition that is analytic.
Webster's New World
An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.
American Heritage
(countable, logic) A statement that is true for all values of its variables.
Given a Boolean A, "A OR (NOT A)" is a tautology.
A logical statement which is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is a contingency.
A tautology can be verified by constructing a truth tree for its negation: if all of the leaf nodes of such truth tree end in X's, then the original (pre-negated) formula is a tautology.
Wiktionary
Synonyms:
Other Word Forms of Tautology
Noun
Singular:
tautology
Plural:
tautologiesOrigin of Tautology
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Late Latin tautologia from Greek tautologiā from tautologos redundant tauto- tauto- logos saying –logy
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
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From Late Latin tautologia, from Ancient Greek ταυτολογία (tautología) from ταὐτός (tautós, “the same") + λόγος (lógos, “explanation")
From Wiktionary
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