Language Lore

Pleonastic constructions continue to proliferate unabated. Alongside extruded adjectives like the safe of safe haven (a haven = a safe harbor), one constantly encounters phrases like skill set and data point, which represent a superfluous linearization of what would otherwise be a simple plural of the substantive, i.e. skills and data. In these latter cases, the extrusion is “rightward-branching” rather than “leftward-branching,” i .e. the hypertrophy occurs to the right rather than the left of the word affected.

One could, of course, maintain that the compound skill set is different from simple skills by emphasizing the collective nature of a set and lending itself to the enumeration of collectivities via pluralization (skill sets); and that data point captures a particular meaning––a point in a collectivity of data––that the simple plural data would not. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the appearance of such phrases as skill set or data point is favored by the general drift of the language (i. e., a real tendency) that predisposes hypertrophic forms in general.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO