SUPERFLUOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does superfluous mean? 

• SUPERFLUOUS (adjective)
  The adjective SUPERFLUOUS has 2 senses:

1. serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being

2. more than is needed, desired, or required

  Familiarity information: SUPERFLUOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUPERFLUOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being

Synonyms:

otiose; pointless; purposeless; senseless; superfluous; wasted

Context example:

senseless violence

Similar:

worthless (lacking in usefulness or value)

Sense 2

Meaning:

More than is needed, desired, or required

Synonyms:

excess; extra; redundant; spare; supererogatory; superfluous; supernumerary; surplus

Context example:

surplus cheese distributed to the needy

Similar:

unnecessary; unneeded (not necessary)

Derivation:

superfluity (extreme excess)

 Context examples 

I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“It would be superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson,” said he.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

This young man has left prints upon the stair-carpet which made it quite superfluous for me to ask to see those which he had made in the room.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Worthless, damaged, defective, superfluous or effluent material from industrial operations.

(Industrial Waste, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

“Your repentance,” I said, is now superfluous.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen last night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured me since the voyage began.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and virility.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)