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"Often" means "many times", so adding -times to it is redundant.
I swear, I never heard this tortuous construction until about 1996. I heard a talking head on a news show use it once, and it was enough to surprise me and bug me.
Since 2000, I have been aware of its usage increasing. Now I hear it all the time. Professional broadcasters, Presidents, speechwriters...they use this word like it is natural.
Am I tripping out? Is this not a new thing? Is this another symptom of the Post-Literate Age?
Redundancy in such constructions is used for rhetorical effect. You certainly don't have to like it as it is a stylistic usage and style is subjective, but it is not technically ungrammatical nor "Post-Literate".
For another example of the phenomenon, see my use of the word forevermore in the post just above this one.
As I probably commented long ago in this thread, it appears that almost everyone who is younger than 35 y.o.--or so--is of the opinion that EVERY sentence is supposed to begin with "so". It doesn't even seem to matter whether the person is well-educated, or not. When young MDs, financial analysts, and other professionals are interviewed on TV or radio, it seem that they all begin every sentence with "so".
When I was in elementary school, I can recall being taught that "so" was normally used as a conjunction, to connect two statements. How can that word be the beginning of a statement?
That one really bothers me, too.
The yutes SPEAK with the "So..." at the beginning of the sentence, SO they think it's OK to write/text that way, I guess.
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