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Webster 1913 Edition


Battology

Bat-tol′o-gy

(băt-tŏl′lō̍-jy̆)
,
Noun.
[F.
battologie
, fr. Gr.
βαττολογία
;
βάττος
; a stammerer +
λόγοσ
speech.]
A needless repetition of words in speaking or writing.
Milton.

Webster 1828 Edition


Battology

BATTOL'OGY

,
Noun.
[Gr. from Barros, a garrulous person, and discourse.]
A needless repetition of woods in speaking.

Definition 2024


battology

battology

See also: batology

English

Noun

battology (uncountable)

  1. Continual unnecessary reiteration of the same words, phrases, or ideas.
    • 1856, Henry Sutherland Edwards, Louis de Lom̂aenie, de Louis Léonard Loménie Beaumarchais and His Times: Sketches of French Society in the Eighteenth Century, page 278
      Logomachy, battology, jingling of words, are all these fine speeches!
    • 1900, Walter Alexander Raleigh, Milton, page 73
      This sonorous balance of phrase and epithet cannot always escape what Milton himself calls "the heathenish battology of multiplying words."
    • 1959, Samuel Beckett, Watt, page 165
      For Watt's sense of chronology was strong, in a way, and his dislike of battology was very strong.
    • 2004, Paul Helm, John Calvin's Ideas, page 43
      Thus he objected to the battology of the Nicene Creed, 'God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,' because, he said, it 'adds neither to the emphasis nor the expressiveness of the document.'