Crossword clues for supernumerary
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Supernumerary \Su`per*nu"mer*a*ry\, a. [L. supernumerarius: cf. OF. supernum['e]raire, F. surnum['e]raire. See Super-, and Numerary, Number.]
Exceeding the number stated or prescribed; as, a supernumerary officer in a regiment.
Exceeding a necessary, usual, or required number or quality; superfluous; as, supernumerary addresses; supernumerary expense.
--Addison.
Supernumerary \Su`per*nu"mer*a*ry\, n.; pl. Supernumeraries.
A person or thing beyond the number stated.
A person or thing beyond what is necessary or usual; especially, a person employed not for regular service, but only to fill the place of another in case of need; specifically, in theaters, a person who is not a regular actor, but is employed to appear in a stage spectacle.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. 1 extra; beyond the standard or prescribed amount or number. 2 Greater in number than. 3 beyond what is necessary. n. 1 A civil designation for somebody who works in a group, association or public office, without forming part of the regular staff; those distinguished from numerary. (For example, supernumerary judges are those who help the regular judges when there is a surplus amount of work.) 2 An extra or walk-on in a film or play; spear-carrier. 3 (rfdef: English)
WordNet
adj. more than is needed, desired, or required; "trying to lose excess weight"; "found some extra change lying on the dresser"; "yet another book on heraldry might be thought redundant"; "skills made redundant by technological advance"; "sleeping in the spare room"; "supernumerary ornamentation"; "it was supererogatory of her to gloat"; "delete superfluous (or unnecessary) words"; "extra ribs as well as other supernumerary internal parts"; "surplus cheese distributed to the needy" [syn: excess, extra, redundant, spare, supererogatory, superfluous, surplus]
n. a minor actor in crowd scenes [syn: spear carrier, extra]
Wikipedia
Supernumerary is an adjective which means "exceeding the usual number". When used as a noun, "supernumerary" means a temporary employee, additional society member, or extra manpower, usually in a function which has a temporary contract. Its counterpart, " numerary", is a civil designation for persons who are incorporated in a fixed or permanent way to a society or group, meaning a regular member of the working staff; permanent staff or member.
The terms supernumerary and "numerary" have long been commonly used in the Spanish and Latin American academy and government; they are now also used in countries all over the world, including France, Great Britain, Italy, and the US. For example, in the Roman army, supernumerarii were either public officers attendant to several of the Roman magistrates or a kind of soldier who filled the places of those killed or disabled by their wounds, or otherwise brought up the ranks to strength.
The supernumerary role is commonplace in numerous fields. For example, there are supernumerary actors, judges, knights, ladies, military personnel, ministers, police officers, professors, and writers.
Supernumerary is an adjective which means "exceeding the usual number".
When used as a noun, supernumerary means a temporary employee, additional society member, or extra manpower.
Other usage of supernumerary includes:
- Supernumerary actor, a performer in a film, television show, or stage production who has no role or purpose other than to appear in the background, more commonly referred to as an "extra."
- Supernumerary body part, most commonly a congenital disorder involving the growth of an additional part of the body and a deviation from the body plan
- Supernumerary rainbow, interference effects inside the arc of the primary bow
- Jewish Supernumerary Police, Jewish Supernumerary Police set up by the British in Mandate Palestine in 1936
- Small supernumerary marker chromosome, an extra, 47th autosomal chromosome called a small supernumerary marker chromosome (sSMC)
- Supernumerary categories, in gender studies, refer to gender categories other than male and female
Usage examples of "supernumerary".
Moreau quotes a case of an infant similar in conformation to the foregoing monster, who was born in Switzerland in 1764, and whose supernumerary parts were amputated by means of a ligature.
Petersburg in mentioning a soldier of twenty-one who had a supernumerary testicle erroneously diagnosed as inguinal hernia.
One of the feet of the supernumerary limb had six toes, while the other, which was merely an outgrowth, had two toes on it.
Warner, in a report of the examination of 50,000 children, quoted by Ballantyne, describes 33 with supernumerary auricles, represented by sessile or pedunculated outgrowths in front of the tragus.
From the body of an otherwise perfectly formed child was a supernumerary head protruding from a broad base attached to the lower lumbar and sacral region.
Trailed by his bugler, the squadron colors and a couple of supernumerary junior noncoms, Gaib was leading his charger, which appeared on the verge of throwing a shoe, toward a still-unpacked traveling forge, his lips moving in curses at well-bred bumpkins who carried their feelings ill balanced on their armguards and gave not one damn for his military rank, rendering him what little deference they did only because he was heir to a Kindred vahrohnos.
In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries.
Madame Bouclet let all her house giving on the Place in furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard behind in company with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards), an inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a countinghouse, four horses, a married sister (with a share in the brewing business), the husband and two children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by the little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several domestics and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four feet high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.
The curtain rose on the ballet, which was one of those excellent specimens of the Italian school, admirably arranged and put on the stage by Henri, who has established for himself a great reputation throughout Italy for his taste and skill in the choregraphic art — one of those masterly productions of grace, method, and elegance in which the whole corps de ballet, from the principal dancers to the humblest supernumerary, are all engaged on the stage at the same time.
I will give you an able seaman's wages and ask Captain Pullings to enter you as a supernumerary.
She'd be much more use familiarizing herself with that piece of machinery than being a supernumerary on a space flight.
The Captain covered his head with all three of his arms, calling the central supernumerary into use for the purpose, slipping it out of its sheath so rapidly as almost to knock Botax over.
In the first place he enjoyed a handsome salary to which hung, like supernumerary bunches of grapes to his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal registries of the provostships, and also the civil and criminal revenues of the Court of the Châtelet, to say nothing of the tolls collected at the bridge of Mante and Corbeil, and other minor perquisites.
Their foreheads varied in size, as did the mouthlike organs in the center, and although their actual mouths never seemed to open except to drink, the supernumerary mouth in the forehead was oddly mobile and full of expression.
D'yu mean to sett there where y'are now, coddlin your supernumerary leg, wi'that bizar tongue in yur tolkshap, and your hindies and shindies, like a muck in a market, Sorley boy, repeating yurself, and tell me that?