Recently I have heard the term "return back" used when "return" is accurate to describe the meaning. I don't like redundancy and it sounds uneducated to me. I hear it from "news" anchors as well as in every day conversation. Why is this happening now? Or is it that I wasn't paying attention when I was younger?
It is redundant, though it is fairly common, and not new. Â Even 'return' seems redundant if there was no 'turn' in the first place, no?
Suppose you were on a tour, starting in your home city of Cincinnati, planning to perform in Dayton, Columbus, Lima, Toledo, Grand Rapids, South Bend, and Indianapolis. While passing through Findlay, you discover that you wife isn't aboard the tour bus. You return to Lima to get her before going on to Toledo. On the other hand, while you are in South Bend, you hear that your mother had a heart sattack, so you cancel the rest of the tour, so you can return back to Cincinnati.
There are places where return, or turn back is more appropriate, and they probably are more common, but return back seems to have a legitimate use, especially when you specify where "back" refers to.
You lost me, deaconB. How is going back to Cincinnati different from going back to Lima except, of course, that they are different places? Is it because Cincinnati is home? or the place from which you started? Is it because of different motives for going back? I just don't see how it makes sense for one to be a return and the other a return back.Â
Robert, I don't think return has meant "turn again" for about seven hundred years.
If you return multiple times to different places, the last one, to home, seems a 'return back.' Â Easily, 'We finally return back to Cincinnati.'
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I didn't expect it, but 'finally return back' is actually in printed books.