In another post I had used that phrase "for all intents and purposes" and then began to wonder about its origin and meaning. It seemed a bit redundant to me. I found this explanation. Of course, I am not sure if it's right, but I thought this explanation was interesting:

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Such doubling up is common in older English idioms ("wrack and ruin") especially in legal phrases ("cease and desist", "aid and abet") and some which originate from legal contexts and have since acquired a more colloquial meaning ("all and sundry").

Thoughts?

[edited typo]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

There are those who treat redundancy the same way they would treat vampires - sprinkling about the holy water of grammatical prescriptivism and wearing a garlic necklace of made-up rules to keep the evil one away.

But redundancy is a part of English. All those phrases you list aren't even the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

You want to eliminate redundancy?
FIne, let's start with plural marking. In the famous Two Ronnies sketch the customer asks four "four candles". The "S" is totally redundant, the word "four" already adequately marks it as plural.

And then let's reduce all the verbs to single forms.

Who do we need "I eat" but "he eats"? The pronoun identifies who it is, what's the "s" for?

Redundancy isn't a pointless waste of words, it serves a number very important purposes - emphasis, repetition to ensure comprehension, rhetoric among others. The actual fact is that we use it all the time. See? Right there! "Actual fact" instead of just "fact". And again. "Right there" instead of just "there".

As with a lot of prescriptivist nonsense it just doesn't match the real language and almost certainly doesn't match the way they (themselves) (actually) speak.

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about it's origin and meaning.

Thoughts?

"It's???" There, Bob, is my garlic necklace on straight?

Not my "it's" mate - Kalleh's... (though its (sic) a common enough typing mistake, made it myself enough times.)

You'll know about the garlic if you wake up tomorrow with a split infinitive.

Sorry to be unclear, Bob. Yes, I knew it was Kalleh's "it's," but your reference to garlic, thus my addressing it to you.

Something else along this line: I recently read "...do's and don'ts..." in a book. While the James J. Kilpatricks and Lynn Trusses of the world might condemn it, it seems to me that "don'ts" is a legitimate contraction of the plural of "do not."

Sorry about my mistake. I corrected it.

Bob, you make a good point about redundancies.

Is there such a thing as a "full and incomplete stop"? If there is, don't unbuckle your airplane seat belt when it occurs!

Do not unbuckle your seatbelts until the aircraft has its period. There, that clarifies it!

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Is there such a thing as a "full and incomplete stop"?

Going off the runway.

I always consider a semi-colon a full and incomplete stop.