: Is it redundant to use "billowing winds" and "petulant waves" in the same sentence? "The ship sailed through the billowing winds and the petulant waves." Is it redundant? Because, if I

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While @Cyn is correct on the type of discription, I think you run into a discription issue. Billowing winds is not a thing. Winds cause things to Billow (like Sails, curtains, coats, capes, ect) but they themselves do not billow. Billow is better used to describe something moving because of the wind being caught in a solid surface of the object than it is to describe the moving of the wind. Winds blow, gust, waft, storm, ect.

Petulant may also not be the best description of the waves, but a slight bit fairer. My only real complaint is that "petulant" anthropomorphizes the waves/ocean/sea (aka it ascribes human character to a thing that is not capable of such character. The waves in real life don't have an attitude from a pure scientific standpoint). This is fairly poetic, but as the two behaviors are side by side, it flows better that the wind similarly anthropomorphized, which is again not uncommon in a poetic description. This is more a personal thing for me as petulant is overly anthropomorphic (In the sense that it's a very poetic and not all that cliche to my mind) and billows is not at all (Billows is something one thing does in response to another force... it's not a human exclusive action that the sails (or wind) can do.) so it's jarring to my mind and is probably the reason you're grammar-spidey-senses are tingling.

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No.

Winds are not waves. You can describe each of them if you wish.

Billowing and petulant have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

Billowing means "filled with air and swelling outward."
Petulant means "childishly sulky or bad-tempered."

The first is a description of the physicality of the subject. The second is an emotional description. Actions by a thinking being.

To be redundant, the two phrases would have to be saying more or less the same thing.

Depending on the rest of the work, the two phrases might be too cluttered or overdone, but they would not be redundant.

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