Redundant Meaning: Extra, Unneeded or Built In on Purpose

Redundant meaning: three senses

Here is a redundant definition broken into the three senses you will meet:

1. Unnecessary or repetitive. Something adds nothing because it is already covered. The second paragraph is redundant; it repeats the first.
2. Out of work because a job is no longer needed (mainly UK, India, Australia). Two hundred staff were made redundant when the factory closed.
3. Backed up on purpose (technical). The data center has redundant power supplies. Here redundancy is a good thing, a safety net.

To define redundant in one phrase: more than is needed. Whether that is a problem depends on the setting.

Redundant words in writing

Editors hunt for redundancy, also called pleonasm: words that repeat a meaning already present. Common examples:

Some of these are so common in speech that nobody minds, and a little repetition can add emphasis. In essays, emails and reports, though, cutting redundant words makes your prose clearer and shorter.

Being made redundant at work

In the United Kingdom, India and other countries influenced by British usage, redundancy means dismissal because the employer no longer needs that role, for example after a closure, a merger or new technology. It is meant to be about the job, not the person's performance. Employees may be entitled to redundancy pay depending on local law and their contract.

In the United States, people usually say laid off instead, and redundant in that sense sounds British. Compare a furlough, a temporary unpaid break with the job kept, and attrition, where a workforce slowly shrinks because departing staff are never replaced.

Redundant in sentences

• The new app made our paper sign-in sheet redundant.
• My teacher crossed out "in my personal opinion" and wrote "redundant" in the margin.
• After the branch merger, her role was made redundant, and she received three months' pay.
• Aircraft carry redundant hydraulic systems so a single failure cannot bring the plane down.
• Bringing two chargers felt redundant until the first one stopped working.

An overflowing wave: the origin

Redundant comes from Latin redundare, to overflow or pour over, from re (back, again) and undare, to surge, from unda, a wave. The picture is of water spilling over the top of a container. Early English uses described something abundant or overflowing; the sense of excess, then of unneeded, grew from there. The job loss meaning is a much later, mainly British development.

Redundant, superfluous, obsolete: what's the difference?

These three are close but not identical:

• Redundant: extra because something else already does the job.
• Superfluous: more than is wanted; slightly fancier, and usually said with a hint of disapproval.
• Obsolete: no longer used because something newer replaced it. An old phone can be obsolete without being redundant.

In engineering, the opposite of redundant design is a single point of failure, a part whose failure stops everything. A robust system usually includes some redundancy. Plenty of other handy adjectives sit in our everyday vocabulary hub, sorted by theme.