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
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.
“It would be superfluous in me,” Abraham Lincoln’s emissary Charles Francis Adams wrote to the British foreign secretary, “to point out to your lordship that this is war.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
Building another in an area close to the big Chinese military bases on Hainan seems superfluous.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2026
At the time, a Homeland Security spokesperson said the judge’s order was “unnecessary and superfluous given DHS’s medical policy goes above and beyond.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2026
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
Moreover, the New Army, which Adams had opposed and then rendered superfluous, had strained the federal budget to a point that demanded new sources of revenue.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
