tautologousadj.

1646 [implied in: T. Lushington Crell's Expiation of Sinner i. 5 We are not to understand that dominion or dignity of Christ, whereby he reignes with his Father in absolute power; for this were to argue tautologously [L. Nam haec Autoris D. comparatio videretur esse tautologica], seeing he mentioned that before. (at tautologously adv.)].

1693 tr. N. Knatchbull Annot. New Test. 61 For it is not properly or significantly said that Jesus began to be about such an age, it being either tautologous [L. tautologum] or dubious.

1714 J. Fortescue-Aland in J. Fortescue Governance of Eng. Pref. 67 The County of Devon, in the old way of Speaking..called the County of Devonshire, which is the constant Expression in old Deeds, and signifies the same thing tho' it be tautologous.

1786 J. H. Tooke Επεα Πτεροεντα ix. 406 I have been purposely tautologous, that by my indifferent application of the two words of and for..the smallest..opposition between these prepositions might be done away.

1853 Fraser's Mag. 47 358 The circuitous jargon—the tautologous gabble..of special pleading.

1884 Sir W. B. Brett in Law Times Rep. 10 May 315/2 I have come to the conclusion..that the Legislature intended in this case to be verbose and tautologous, and to say the same thing twice over.

1959 R. Davies Enthusiasms (1991) 66 When I call mehitabel the Greatest Literary Cat in Fiction I am not being tautologous: she was a fictional creature, but she was also literary, because she wrote verse.

1999 R. Deakin Waterlog (2000) xxv. 255 I took a high swallow dive..down into..the Cotswolds (not ‘the Cotswold hills’, which, as William Cobbett pointed out, is tautologous because wolds are hills).

1922 C. K. Ogden et al. tr. L. Wittgenstein Tractatus 6.1231 An ungeneralized proposition can be tautologous [Ger. tautologisch] just as well as a generalized one.

1935 Mind 44 195 The tautologous ‘p or not p’.

1940 W. V. Quine Math. Logic i. 50 Statements which are true by virtue solely of the truth-functional modes of composition will be called tautologous.

2004 Jrnl. Philos. Logic 33 503 Where ⊤ is classically tautologous and ⊥ classically contradictory, ⊥/⊤ entails all conditional assertions and all entail ⊤/⊤.