redundant

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin redundāns (“overflowing, abounding”),^[2][3][4][5] the present participle of redundō (“to overflow, be in excess”),^[2][6][7] which also gave redound;^[8][7] in post-classical Latin the participle meant "superfluous", in Tertullian.^[2] The verb is formed from red- (“back, again”) and undō (“to rise in waves, surge”),^[3][8][5] from unda (“a wave”),^[3][4][8] from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (“water; wet”).^[3][4] Barnhart allows some influence of French redondant,^[9] which the OED records once in the 13th century and then from the 16th; compare Spanish redundante, Portuguese redundante and Italian ridondante.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Superfluous, excessive, unnecessary: the OED's first quotation is from J. Northbrooke's Spiritus est Vicarius Christi (1577?),^[2] and Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to about 1577.^[6] Barnhart has 1604, in Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall,^[9] and the Oxford Dictionary of English says that the earliest sense was "abundant".^[10]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th century the word was also used in a more positive sense, "plentiful, exuberant", and of things "overflowing" in the Latin way, as in Milton's Paradise Lost, where a serpent's coils "floated redundant" on the grass;^[3][11][12] Johnson (1755) gave "superabundant; exuberant; superfluous".^[12] The sense of language using more words than needed dates from 1604.^[2] Music used it for augmented intervals (1753–1829),^[2] and engineering for a part of a framework that can be removed without loss of rigidity (1876), and for duplicated parts that keep a device working if one fails (1952).^[2][11] The chiefly British sense, of a worker no longer needed and so dismissed, is recorded from 1908,^[2] by 1928 according to Etymonline,^[3] and of a building or object no longer used, from 1950.^[2] Information theory and linguistics took it up for elements that add no information (1951), and genetics for non-coding DNA (1962).^[2]

Timeline

• 1577 – superfluous, excessive.^[2][6]
• 1604 – having superfluous parts; of language, verbose.^[2][9]
• 1753 – in music, of an interval, augmented (obsolete by 1829).^[2]
• 1876 – in engineering, of a structural member, removable without loss of rigidity.^[2]
• 1908 – chiefly British, of a worker, no longer needed in a job.^[2]
• 1950 – of a building, no longer used for its purpose.^[2]
• 1951 – contributing no new information.^[2]
• 1952 – of a device, with duplicated parts as a safeguard.^[2]
• 1962 – of DNA, non-coding.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. More than is needed; superfluous or unnecessary.^[13][6][2]
2. Using more words than necessary; repetitive or tautological: The phrase “free gift” is redundant.^[13][6][2]
3. (chiefly British) Of a worker, dismissed because the job is no longer needed: Two hundred miners were made redundant.^[13][2]
4. Of a part or system, duplicated as a safeguard against failure.^[13][2]
5. (linguistics, computing) Of information, adding nothing that could not be predicted from the rest.^[2][11]

Word family

• redundantly

Related words

• redound
• redundancy
• undulate

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins