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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Exceeding what is necessary or natural; superfluous.
  2. adj. Needlessly wordy or repetitive in expression: a student paper filled with redundant phrases.
  3. adj. Of or relating to linguistic redundancy.
  4. adj. Chiefly British Dismissed or laid off from work, as for being no longer needed.
  5. adj. Electronics Of or involving redundancy in electronic equipment.
  6. adj. Of or involving redundancy in the transmission of messages.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Rolling or flowing back, as a wave or surge.
  2. Superfluous; exceeding what is natural or necessary; superabundant; exuberant.
  3. Using or containing more words or images than are necessary or useful: as, a redundant style.
  4. Noting a condition of the wing membrane in bats when it extends well down on the leg, and on the arm embraces the thumb beyond the first phalanx.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Superfluous; exceeding what is necessary.
  2. adj. Repetitive or needlessly wordy.
  3. adj. Dismissed from employment because no longer needed.
  4. adj. Duplicating or able to duplicate the function of another component of a system, providing back-up in the event the other component fails.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Exceeding what is natural or necessary; superabundant; exuberant.
  2. adj. Using more worrds or images than are necessary or useful; pleonastic.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. repetition of same sense in different words
  2. adj. more than is needed, desired, or required

Etymologies

  1. Latin redundāns, redundant-, present participle of redundāre, to overflow : re-, red-, re- + undāre, to surge (from unda, wave; see wed-1 in Indo-European roots).

Examples

  • “The term redundant design means that when one system fails, another carries the load.”

    Think Progress » 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Redux: Malkin Argues That Qana Was An Inside Job

  • “The song is assembly line Akon: a reedy, shouty chorus, a glimmering beat, and questionable spelling and diction ( "Na" actually means "now" in Akon's world, thus making the "na" 's in the title redundant).”

    Prefix

  • “On the other hand, everyone there will be able to type, and by then technology might have made the ability to sign your name redundant.”

    The Wall Street Journal: The Handwriting Is on the Wall

  • “I don't want to use the word redundant, but we have two Revolutionary political leaders representing Maryland, and you wonder if there were great Marylanders who did anything apart from the Revolution," Cohen said.”

    The Washington Post: Harriet Tubman vs. John Hanson: Statuary Hall smackdown

  • “Personally, I'd rather the police keep to tormenting criminals than getting trigger-happy with the innocent. p.s. Please don't tell me that "l'eau" makes the preceding word in the title redundant - nay, superfluous and altogether unwanted: a pariah in the great thesaurus of life; an article definitely unwanted.”

    buggerthat Diary Entry

  • “Instantly I expect people to assume I have my facts wrong when I use the word "president" instead of mayor, but let's be clear, the proposal that the Tories have pushed whereby large cities in England would have directly elected mayors with presidential powers which allow them to make councillors almost totally redundant is the last thing that local democracy needs.”

    Archive 2009-02-01

  • “Doing something that makes the corruption-ridden cap-and-trade system redundant is good, and a broad-based consumption tax has a lot to recommend it.”

    Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Wherein, To My Great Surprise, I actually Agree with James Hansen

  • “There is nothing to say that anyone recently made redundant from a bank would have any more experience of classroom management, planning, laws, issues than a classroom assistant with 10 years experience of a classroom who would be expected to do a one year PGCE.”

    Teaching in 6 months ? Idiocy from Labour

  • “The genetic code is called redundant (although I myself do not know whether the code is redundant because I don't know the reason why it evolved, so I cannot call it redundant) meaning that more than one codons can code for a single amino acid.”

    A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria

  • “I knew a kid who would use the word redundant for EVERYTHING.”

    dailycomic Diary Entry

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Comments

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  • reesetee Man, this page is painful. Feb 7, 2008

  • Prolagus I agree. I think exactly the same as uselessness' thought. I reckon that tip is very helpful, and useful, and I hope people will understand it and make a good use of the tip itself. Thanks, uselessness, I agree with you. You're right. Feb 7, 2008

  • uselessness Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. Jan 25, 2007

‘redundant’ has been looked up 3165 times, loved by 5 people, added to 40 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 11.