Learn English – Is it correct to use multiple adjectives that mean the same thing as one adjective

grammarword-usage

I came across this quote from some popular guy who likes to use big words and I was wondering if it's correct.

Their vacuous posturing, pharissaical sanctimonies and sadducceical
homilies now has the tinge of becoming nauseating, megalomaniacal,
vexatious and scabrously schizophrenic.

Basically, is it possible for all the adjectives to mean one thing, is there a form or category of speech (not tautology) that allows you to use multiple adjectives and still refer to them as one adjective?

Best Answer

This particular sentence is admittedly pretentious and in an attempt to show off his or her sesquipedality the author you quote has run aground.

First of all, it should indeed be have since the verb in that sentence applies to three separate things: their vacuous posturing, their pharissaical sanctimonies and their sadducceical homilies.

I also don't quite get how something can have the tinge of becoming. It could have the tinge of but not really the tinge of becoming. At any rate, it sounds very strange to me.

In short, the whole sentence reads like someone showing off. Badly. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stringing multiple adjectives with similar meanings together. This has been used to great effect by many authors over the centuries. To take a bad example from a great author:

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

(Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 1, Act 1, Scene 1 )

Though the sentence you posted is not really an example of it since the words are not so similar in meaning, the use of multiple words that mean the same thing (or which are unnecessary) is called pleonasm, a type of tautology. For example, this quote from Becket's Molloy which I found on Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

"Let me tell you this, when social workers offer you, free, gratis and for nothing, ..."