“Pleonasms are abundant.”

Pleonasms are abundant.  "I done done it" (have done it or did do it).  "Durin' the while."  "In this day and time."  "I thought it would surely, undoubtedly turn cold."  "A small, little bitty hole."  "Jane's a tol'able big, large, fleshy woman."  "I ginerally, usually take a dram mornin's."  "These ridges is might' nigh straight up and down, and, as the feller said, perpendic'lar."

Everywhere in the mountains we hear of biscuit-bread, ham-meat, rifle-gun, rock-clift, ridin'-critter, cow-brute, man-person, women-folks, preacher-man, granny-woman and neighbor-people.  In this category belong the famous double-barreled pronouns: we-all and you-all in Kentucky and you-uns and we-uns in Carolina and Tennessee.  (I have even heard such locution as this: "Let's we-uns all go over to youerunses house.")

That is from the often quite interesting Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers, by Horace Kephart, recommended to me by a loyal MR reader.

To think that "cow-brute" is a pleonasm is truly very excellent.  I might add that the discussion of the triple and quadruple and indeed quintuple negative is of interest: "I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do no washin'."

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