Redundant

How to spell redundant

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce redundant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does redundant mean?

1. adjectiveNo longer needed or useful because something else already serves the purpose; superfluous.
2. adjectiveNo longer employed because the job itself has been eliminated.

Redundant in a sentence

• The new automated system made the manual logbook completely redundant.

• After the factory closed, three hundred workers were made redundant.

• Editors trimmed every redundant phrase from the report to keep it concise.

• He received a generous payment when his post was declared redundant.

Where does redundant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin redundans, the present participle of redundare, which literally meant 'to overflow' or 'to surge back like a wave'. That verb was built from the prefix red-, a form of re- meaning 'back' or 'again', joined to unda, the Latin word for 'a wave' (the same root that gives us 'undulate' and 'inundate'). The image was of water flooding over its banks, so something redundant was something present in excess, more than was actually needed. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, keeping that core idea of superfluity, and by the twentieth century British and Commonwealth usage extended it to workers whose jobs were no longer required. The spelling trap is the unstressed final syllable, which sounds like a vague schwa yet must be written -ant, not -ent, a clue preserved in the original Latin participle ending.

How the word is built

• red- (variant of re-: back, again)
• und (from Latin unda: wave)
• -ant (adjective suffix)