Luke did not come to the warm side.
Word watchers give tautological redundancies a lukewarm reception, as well they should. Such a reception represents a perfect marriage of form and content.
Or as well they shouldn't. Because, in a sense, to give a lukewarm reception would be to engage in tautology as bad as the repe- titiously repetitive “tautological redundancies” above. The adjective luke, largely obsolete since the days of Middle English but still apparently in dialectical use, meant what the word lukewarm now denotes: “tepid.” So, historically, our word lukewarm means luke- warmwarm.
So, word watchers, is use of lukewarm now heating you up a bit?