superfluousness

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su·per·flu·ous

(so͝o-pûr′flo͞o-əs)

adj.

Being beyond what is required or sufficient.

[Middle English, from Old French superflueux, from Latin superfluus, from superfluere, to overflow : super-, super- + fluere, to flow; see bhleu- in Indo-European roots.]

su·per′flu·ous·ly adv.

su·per′flu·ous·ness n.

Synonyms: superfluous, excess, extra, supernumerary, surplus
These adjectives mean being more than is needed, desired, required, or appropriate: delete superfluous words; trying to lose excess weight; found some extra change on the dresser; supernumerary ornamentation; distributed surplus food to the needy.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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superfluousness

noun

A condition of going or being beyond what is needed, desired, or appropriate:

embarrassment, excess, excessiveness, exorbitance, extravagance, extravagancy, extravagantness, overabundance, plethora, superabundance, superfluity, surfeit.

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References in classic literature ?

Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight.

View in context

is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of the modern masses...

Solitary Spider Stories of 'Becoming Teachers Together': Knots Spun from an Arts-Based Research Project with a Garden

Aneeka translates GWM for Eamonn as "Googling While Muslim." Isma, a PhD candidate, is wise to the othering effects of language, wryly noting the superfluousness of "chai tea" and "na'an bread," as well as more insidious word choices:

Divided loyalties

The standard midrashic reading here begins from the apparent superfluousness of brings forth seed [ki tazria]; whatever physiological phenomenon it refers to presumably occurs in all pregnancies, and therefore the text should simply have said ishah ki teled zakhar, "when a woman gives birth to a male".

LEVITICUS 12:2: MIDRASH IS NOT VERSOCENTRIC

Scham follows Ruth El Saffar to dismiss the putative poison as an "artistically deficient" reason for the character's illness: "El Saffar is right in pointing out the superfluousness of the poison fruitf--].

Michael Scham. Lector Ludens: The Representation of Games & Play in Cervantes

For this, human beings are not deprived from superfluousness and consumption shall be governed by feelings, especially the feeling of happiness.

Thinkers of feeding: workers discuss their difficulties to incorporate healthy eating habits

And, till a landmark piece of legislation saw them banned in the early Nineties, a terrifying superfluousness of fe to smocks.

THIS MUCH I KNOW; OPINION

Now, here comes "Fantasia: Music Evolved'' to take rhythmic superfluousness to a new level.

'Fantasia' definitely not harmonious

That is because their time is past, and no amount of taxpayer funding to prop them up will hide the fact of their cultural superfluousness, WHICH THEY HAVE BROUGHT UPON THEMSELVES.

What would Peggy do? 14th Annual Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address 2012

His cases illustrate why in the Arendtian / Hayden framework evil cannot be graded into lesser and greater forms: precisely because evil at its base refers to making humans superfluousness, dehumanizing them, or obliterating "personhood through several perversions of power" (Hayden 2009: 3).

Hannah Arendt in a global age: political evil and international theory

Only elegance has its connotation of superfluousness, and what of this poet--of any genuine poet--could be pared away without destroying the whole?