pleonastic (adj.)

A term used in GRAMMAR for an ELEMENT which repeats or anticipates some other element in a SENTENCE and is thus SEMANTICALLY REDUNDANT. The use of it in such sentences as It seems that Mary has left or It’s raining has sometimes been called a pleonastic pronoun. The use of do as an empty AUXILIARY VERB has been called pleonastic do. The term is derived from the traditional language of usage criticism, where a pleonasm was seen as a species of tautology – the use of more words than is strictly necessary to convey a particular sense.