👉 In linguistics, an "oversubtlety" is a grammatical error or ambiguity that occurs when a word has been used more than once without any clear meaning attached to it. This can occur in a sentence where there are multiple instances of the same word, or in a paragraph where multiple sentences use the same word with different meanings. Example: I'm sorry, but I didn't understand what you said. Overseas students often have trouble learning English because they don't speak English