Talking about redundancies, a nice example that infests a lot of writing and broadcasting these days is "reaching a crescendo" or "building up to a crescendo" when a better word would be "climax." Like a lot of things, this has achieved common currency via ignorance, a bit like "disinterested," "epicentre" and "alternate." They are defended by dint of the fact that they ARE now in common use and have become standard English (in their degraded usages). We have to accept that, but not without a wrestling match...