- 1多餘的、不必要的；台灣課堂常說「贅字」「贅述」，指刪掉也不影響的那種多
Superfluous describes something that is more than you need, so it could be taken away and nothing would be lost. It is a slightly formal word, common in writing, reports, and careful speech. The key idea is not that the thing is bad — it is that it is unnecessary: a superfluous sentence may be perfectly well written, but the paragraph works without it. You will often hear it about words, details, steps, staff, and objects. Two habits of use are worth knowing. It very often appears in the phrase 'it would be superfluous to say/add…', a polite way of saying 'I don't need to explain this, we both know it'. And it is a favourite word in editing and design, where cutting the superfluous is the whole job. In everyday talk, many people would just say 'unnecessary' or 'not needed'; superfluous sounds a little more educated, sometimes deliberately so.
組成Latin super ('above, more than, over') + fluō ('flow') → superfluus, 'overflowing', plus the adjective ending -ous. The literal picture is water flowing over the top of a full cup. English already had a Germanic word for exactly this idea — overflow — which is a piece-by-piece match: super = over, fluere = flow.
同家族的字
- fluidLatin fluere, 'to flow'
- mellifluous'honey-flowing' — same fluere root, used of sweet-sounding voices
- fluentlanguage that flows — fluere again
- superfluitythe noun form of this word
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
superfluousadj/suːˈpɜːflu.əs/
- 1
In excess of what is required or sufficient.
- With a full rain suit, carrying an umbrella may be superfluous.
- Then I began to play in timid fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gulden at a time. Meanwhile, I observed and took notes. It seemed to me that calculation was superfluous, and by no means possessed of the importance which certain other players attached to it, even though they sat with ruled papers in their hands, whereon they set down the coups, calculated the chances, reckoned, staked, and—lost exactly as we more simple mortals did who played without any reckoning at all.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。