superfluous
adjUK /suːˈpɜːflu.əs/ · CA, US /suˈpɝflu.əs/
Etymology From Middle English superfluous, from Latin superfluus (“superfluous”) + -ous, from superfluō (“overflow”), from super (“above, more than, over”) + fluō (“flow”). Compare mellifluous and fluid, also from Latin. Literally corresponds to overflow, which is from Germanic, rather than Latin.
1
In excess of what is required or sufficient.
- With a full rain suit, carrying an umbrella may be superfluous.
- Then I began to play in timid fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gulden at a time. Meanwhile, I observed and took notes. It seemed to me that calculation was superfluous, and by no means possessed of the importance which certain other players attached to it, even though they sat with ruled papers in their hands, whereon they set down the coups, calculated the chances, reckoned, staked, and—lost exactly as we more simple mortals did who played without any reckoning at all.1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter IV, in The Gambler, translated by C. J. Hogarth^(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(1867)/IV):
- Synonyms
- de trop, dispensible, excessive, excrescent, extra, extraneous, extravagant, pleonastic, supernumerary, surplus, unnecessary, needless, redundant
- Derived terms
- nonsuperfluous, superfluity, superfluous interval, superfluousity, superfluously, superfluous man, superfluousness, unsuperfluous
- Related terms
- superflux, mellifluous
- Coordinate terms
- gratuitous