What is "superfluous"

Usage examples of "superfluous".

We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary.

None the less, the monogamists, after due reflection, will point out that if there are widowers enough the superfluous women are not really superfluous, and therefore there is no reason why the parties should not marry respectably like other people.

The reputation of this incomparable Poem is so thoroughly established in the world, that it would be superfluous, if not impertinent, to endeavour any panegyric upon it.

Ternary and rejects and removes that somber and superfluous part of the quaternary, the source of obscure shadows.

She opened the broom cupboard, took a brush, a duster, superfluous tools unneeded in that speckless house.

Miss Ross walked defiantly on, keeping her place on the trottoir with a grim determination not to be pushed off it by all the voyous in Paris, and though his presence was, as he well knew, entirely superfluous upon the occasion, he could not pay her the questionable compliment of leaving her to prove her independence alone.

Possibly, as John Quincy surmised, it was because Adams had denied him his chance for military glory, humiliated him at Trenton, and made his army superfluous.

Then the lock was released, and they entered a wide hallway, elegantly carpeted, small tables dotting it as if items left over, superfluous.

Actually the term as used in the contracts clause has been rendered more or less superfluous by the doctrine that the law in force when a contract is made enters into and comprises a part of the contract itself.

By reason of its coolness it tempers superfluous heat: wherefore it fittingly mitigates the concupiscence of the fomes.

A greenstick fracture of the ulna was visible but the injury was so well healed that the splint and bandage were superfluous.

Above it, on a very black and elaborate framework, hangs a very black and shiny mat, whose superfluous soot forms the basis of the stain used in tattooing, and whose apparent purpose is to prevent the smoke ascending, and to diffuse it equally throughout the room.

And certainly, there is much to dislike about superfluous displays - Phariseeism aside, there is such a thing as sickening excess.

Mechanisms which, I might add, were declared superfluous and unnecessary by Pil Bubbacub and many others during construction.

A more numerous band retired beyond the Carpathian Mountains, among the Quadi, their German allies, and were easily admitted to share a superfluous waste of uncultivated land.