Redundant
adj ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Superfluous; exceeding what is necessary, no longer needed.
"It is allowed, that Senates and great Councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant Humours, with many Diſeaſes of the Head and more of the Heart; […]"
- 2 Repetitive or needlessly wordy.
- 3 Dismissed from employment because no longer needed. Australia, British, Ireland, New-Zealand
"Four employees were made redundant."
- 4 Duplicating or able to duplicate the function of another component of a system, providing backup in the event the other component fails.
"The two lines are mainly used for redundant and therefore fault-tolerant message transmission, but they can also transmit different messages."
- 5 Containing duplicate pathways to send a message.
- 1 repetition of same and identical sense with different and non-identical words wordnet
- 2 more than is needed, desired, or required wordnet
Example
More examples"The bottles of beer that I brought to the party were redundant; the host's family owned a brewery."
Etymology
From Latin redundāns, present participle of redundō (“to overflow, redound”), from red- (“again, back”) + undō (“to surge, flood”), from unda (“a wave”).
Related phrases
More for "redundant"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.