adjective
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exceeding what is sufficient or required
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not necessary or relevant; uncalled-for
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obsolete extravagant in expenditure or oversupplied with possessions
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of superfluous
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin superfluus, from super- super- + flu- (stem of fluere “to flow”) + -us -ous
Explanation
When something is so unnecessary that it could easily be done away with, like a fifth wheel on a car or a fifth person on a double date, call it superfluous. Superfluous (soo-PER-floo-uhs) means "more than required." Use it when pointing out something that could be removed without detracting from the quality of something: "For a climb over a glacier, the very thickest shoes are absolutely necessary; beyond these, all else seems superfluous to me," wrote the adventurer Charles Stoddard in 1899. The word comes from Latin and literally means "overflowing": super ("over") + fluere ("to flow"). So you can think of a superfluous addition as flowing over the boundaries of what's needed.
Vocabulary lists containing superfluous
100 Top "SAT" Words
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Grade 11, List 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Once again, artificial intelligence was at the center of the selloff, amid worries that software would be made superfluous by Anthropic’s Claude applications.
From Barron's • Feb. 7, 2026
Italians mastered how to create a food culture built around comfort and family without being superfluous.
From Salon • Jan. 24, 2026
“Everything in the cabin, whether or not it made it into the final movie, was used and touched. There was nothing superfluous, really.”
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 15, 2025
This provoked yelps from technocrats who said it was impractical and superfluous.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 18, 2025
The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.
From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
