"So saying, her rash hand, in evil hour,
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate!
Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost."—Milton.
"War and Love are strange compeers.
War sheds blood, and Love sheds tears;
War has swords, and Love has darts;
War breaks heads, and Love breaks hearts."
"Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears."
"The English language, by reserving the distinction of gender for living beings that have sex, gives especial scope for personification. The highest form of personification should be used seldom, and only when justified by the presence of strong feeling."—Bain.
"Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."—Cowper.
Phenomenon. Plural, phenomena.
Plead. The imperfect tense and the perfect participle of the verb to plead are both pleaded and not plead. "He pleaded not guilty." "You should have pleaded your cause with more fervor."
Plenty. In Worcester's Dictionary we find the following note: "Plenty is much used colloquially as an adjective, in the sense of plentiful, both in this country and in England; and this use is supported by respectable authorities, though it is condemned by various critics. Johnson says: 'It is used barbarously, I think, for plentiful'; and Dr. Campbell, in his 'Philosophy of Rhetoric,' says: 'Plenty for plentiful appears to me so gross a vulgarism that I should not have thought it worthy of a place here if I had not sometimes found it in works of considerable merit.'" We should say, then, that money is plentiful, and not that it is plenty.
Pleonasm. Redundancy or pleonasm is the use of more words than are necessary to express the thought clearly. "They returned back again to the same city from whence they came forth": the five words in italics are redundant or pleonastic. "The different departments of science and of art mutually reflect light on each other": either of the expressions in italics embodies the whole idea. "The universal opinion of all men" is a pleonastic expression often heard. "I wrote you a letter yesterday": here a letter is redundant.
Redundancy is sometimes permissible for the surer conveyance of meaning, for emphasis, and in the language of poetic embellishment.