tautological

tautological \taw-TOL-uh-guh-kuhl\, adjective:

unnecessarily or uselessly repetitive

Perhaps the very term novel of ideas is tautological, for what novel is barren of ideas, unshaped by ideas?
-- Joyce Carol Oates, Loving the Illusions, New York Times, July 17, 1983

It may sound tautological to suggest that he wrote historically, because that was the way his culture had taught him to think, but that is the case nonetheless.
-- Donald Harman Akenson, Surpassing Wonder

by 1620 from tautologic, from Late Latin tautologia "representation of the same thing", from Greek tautologia, from tautologos "repeating what has been said," from tauto "the same" + -logos "saying," related to legein "to say"