Is “to share or to have a common interest” a tautology?
I often read and hear “to share a common..” but it seems very pleonastic to me it seems. Why is it saying a thing twice? Is tautology acceptable here?
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A tautology is the needless repetition of an idea.
Issues are not common. Identical concepts exist? Can we share common platforms, common living spaces, and many other things? How can one share uncommon interests
Share : a part or portion of a larger amount divided among a number of people, or to which a number of people contribute. Synonyms include portion, part, division, quota, quantum, allowance, ration, allocation, measure. How will one portion your money, space, etc?
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What are some examples
of tautologies: A bomb could have been sparked off…….who
died from a fatal dose of heroin.
… equalized the game to a 2-2 draw…
kept it from his friends that he was a secret drinker…. kept
it from his others that he was an alcoholic before meeting him after he criticized J J Kellen…. kept it from his friends that he was a rumor he’d been a alcoholic after starting drinking more than once a game… kept it from his friends that he was a sucker… kept it hidden from
In the meaning in which the phrase is usually understood, to share a common interest is indeed a tautological because it means that some people both have an interest in something that they both are interested in: both share and common indicate that the object is applicable to all subjects involved.
In that case, I would indeed say
it’s because they have an interest in the world.
They
have a common interest. If that is true, why do we love them so much?
On the other hand, if I invite individual in a group to share some of their personal details with the group, they are certainly invited to list their interests or hobbies. If individual interests are not applicable to others in the group, or if those interests are out of the ordinary in general (see example in my comment to Susan), it would be correct to say they are sharing uncommon interests. If their interests do apply to the rest of the group as well, one could similarly state (without it being a tautology) that they were sharing common interests.
This would involve a different meaning of the verb to share altogether though.
In the same way, we want to express how common (or usual ) interests are that two or more individuals share, the statement They
share a common interest.
If someone is doing so, should he or she be read as “they are both interested in something that is very common, like pop music. In that case, there is also no tautology.
TLDR:
So, if “share” means “to tell something”, or “common” is understood to mean “usual”, there is no tautology. In the general sense of “they share an interest” meaning “they have a common interest”, I would see “they share a common interest” as in a
tautology.
At first sight, this does look like a tautology, and you might think that sharing something means that it is common or “common to the sharers” anyway. What are some of the best way to do something common? More like reinforcements, rather than redundancies, in mathematical mathematics
these expressions appear rather more like reinforcements than redundancies.
