Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Not constituting a vital element or part.
- adj. Inessential or unrelated to the topic or matter at hand; irrelevant. See Synonyms at irrelevant.
- adj. Coming from the outside: extraneous interference.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not belonging or proper to a thing; not intrinsic or essential, though attached; foreign: as, to separate gold from extraneous matter; extraneous ornaments or observances.
- Synonyms See exterior.
- In music, not belonging to a standard scale or key; chromatic.
Wiktionary
- adj. Not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; foreign
- adj. Not essential or intrinsic
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; not essential or intrinsic; foreign.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. not pertinent to the matter under consideration
- adj. coming from the outside
- adj. not belonging to that in which it is contained; introduced from an outside source
- adj. not essential
Etymologies
- From Latin extrāneus ("from without, strange") (Wiktionary)
- From Latin extrāneus, from extrā, outside; see extra-. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But as far as an "emergency fund," which I define as extraneous and unexpected expenses hospital bill, car wreck, etc.”
“The other thing to be aware of when looking at fonts is what I call extraneous fonts.”
“This book also they call extraneous, which some of the Jews prohibit to be read.”
“Although so much of it is too entrancing to be termed extraneous, it does mean a director has to deal with the abundant non-libretto passages.”
The Huffington Post: David Finkle: First Nighter: Richard Strauss's Mezz-a-Mezz Intermezzo
“What Democrats said is that they also offered the president another carrot, if you will, and that is to cut off some of the -- what the White House called extraneous domestic spending on this emergency bill.”
“But it is true that observing that there are certain thoughts which arise neither from external objects nor from the determination of my will, but only from my faculty of thinking; in order to mark the difference between the ideas or the notions which are the forms of these thoughts, and to distinguish them from the others, which may be called extraneous or voluntary, I have called them innate.”
“These excisable songs are perhaps best described as extraneous genre exercises (most specifically, the just a little bit too cute "I Did What I Did").”
“But it does mean that if a law is consistently applied to only one subset of persons, based on political or other extraneous considerations (extraneous, meaning other than whether the person committed the crime), then it ceases to be an exercise in “law” and becomes one of politics.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » “Garzon and the Trouble with International Law”
“Bonus points were given for "extraneous" factors such as the presence of an Australian accent and points were deducted for "rudeness of being Canadian.”
“India should be less concerned about the inclusion of "extraneous" issues in the FTA as most of the provisions are in any case either covered by domestic legislation or non-binding.”
The Wall Street Journal: FTA: Free Trade Agreement or Futile Talk and Agony?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘extraneous’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Psychology
Chapter 1
rigorous, occurrence, maze, divers, intellectual, expansion, all in all, sensation, introspection, radical, orientation, nurture and 174 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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AFET - diplomacy
broker a peace ac..., client state, deadlocked peace ..., embassy, freeze, goodwill ambassador, hinterland, interfere in dome..., intervene personally, maintain technica..., mediation, no business as usual and 670 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Orwellian Purism
Words and phrases George Orwell criticizes in his essay 'Politics and the English Language'.
ring the changes on, take up the cudge..., toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to..., play into the han..., no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubl..., on the order of t..., Achilles’ heel, swan song and 162 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Words which would do well to assimila...
necronym, paronym, oronym, blandiloquence, grandiloquence, gaudiloquent, fecund, anagogy, horrisonous, homosporous, extraneous, mephistophelian and 1 more...
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SAT words
abase, abate, abet, abject, abjure, abrogate, abscond, abstruse, accolade, accommodating, accost, accretion and 202 more...
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apjoseph's words
insurmountable, ubiquitous, unequivocal, incumbent, asinine, amenable, sycophants, precarious, malevolent, gregarious, raison detra, nefarious and 200 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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Real words that I love
Words that make me happy in my pants AND have a place in the dictionary.
enervate, efficacious, basilisk, minotaur, elfin, elephantine, schadenfreude, enigma, emasculate, acidic, appalling, ridiculous and 102 more...
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Words
My list of words.
veritable, facetious, nadir, quixotic, apropos, acquiesce, ostensible, insipid, egregious, inveterate, coax, adroit and 409 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for extraneous.

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