I have a tendency to get a bit hung up on certain things relating to words and language, and it seems the last “coming of the death-disease” craze has also infected language with a new, somewhat stupid word use*, namely “avian bird flu”.

I have seen this term a few times, a combination of avian influenza and the more mundane bird flu, and the thing that’s bugging me about this is the redundancy – the adjective avian is defined as “of, relating to, or resembling a bird (from latin avis bird).” So while people seem to think the addition of avian makes it sound more technical or something, they are actually saying “bird-related bird flu”, which sounds kind of stupid to me. But maybe I’m the only one?

* I think there is a linguistic term for “stacking” words with similar meanings, other examples could be “a large giant” or “very idiotic stupidity”, but I seem to have forgotten it. Feel free to re-enlighten me.