Repeating One's Self May Result In A Tautology (Yes, That's Redundant)

"Tautology: Needless repetition of the same sense in different words."

That's the American Heritage Dictionary's definition.

"Tautology" is one of those words that took a while (or is it "awhile"?) for me to grasp the meaning of. For some reason, I thought it meant "a contradiction in terms," like an oxymoron - which is the opposite of what "tautology" means.

Basically, "tautology" is a fancy way of saying something's redundant, like the sign below:

I recently got the inexplicable impulse to look up the meaning of this odd-sounding word and came across a website with a list of funny examples. This inspired me to come up with a list of my own: 

That comic-book character is an evil villain.

She fired a gun and shot a man.

He turned another year older on his birthday.

That 50-year-old man is middle-aged.

It's for real, actually.

I arrived home and walked in my house.

I was startled awake by loud yelling.

These phrases may sound funny, but not everything that sounds redundant is redundant. For example, the website I stumbled upon listed "new innovation" as an example of a common tautology.

But I can think of an instance where a "new innovation" isn't a tautology. Maybe a technology company has developed several innovations and a new gadget they've just released is, indeed, a new innovation. So maybe the correct term in that instance would be "latest innovation"?

Another example of a phrase that sounds redundant but may not be: "I got an autograph from that well-known celebrity."

A grammar snob would contend that it's a given that celebrities are well-known; no need to state (or re-state) the obvious. But I would argue that someone could be a minor celebrity, such as a reality TV star who may be famous only among a certain viewer demographic, as opposed to a well-known celebrity who is a household name all over the world like, say, Angelina Jolie. 

Here's yet another example: "That muscular man is a bodybuilder." You can be a muscular man without being a professional bodybuilder, so, technically, that phrase isn't a redundant tautology (yes, I intentionally wrote those last two words on purpose).