extraneous
UK/ɛkˈstɹeɪ.ni.əs/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/ekˈstɹæɪ.ni.əs/
extraneous adjective: not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; foreign.
Adjective
extraneous (not comparable)
- Not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; foreign.
- to separate gold from extraneous matter
- Extraneous substances were found on my cup of water.
- Synonyms:
- additional, alien, foreign, intrusive, acquired, adventitious, ascititious, fremd, outlandish, strange
- Not essential or intrinsic.
- Edward had seen beauty often, and seen it with every possible aid; but never had he seen beauty so perfect, yet so utterly devoid of extraneous assistance.1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC
- If the Government believes that part of the railways' salvation is to be found in ridding them of extraneous concerns, it should have had the courage either to close the railway works down as quickly as possible, or to hive them off as an entirely separate concern, [...].1964 May, “News and Comment: Minister hamstrings BR workshops”, in Modern Railways, page 291
- Synonyms:
- superfluous, extra, accidental, adscititious, external, extrinsic
extraneous meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
extraneous in Tamil
- அயலான, தொடர்பற்ற, புறச்சார்பான, புறம்பான
extraneous in Urdu
- خارجی
extraneous in Bengali
- অপ্রাসঙ্গিক, বাইরের বিষয়
extraneous in Malayalam
- immaterial, irrelevant, beside the point
- ബാഹ്യ, അപ്രസക്തമായ, അസംഗതമായ, അപ്രധാനമായ, അന്യമായ, ഭിന്നമായ
- outside, external, exterior
- വിദേശീയമായ, പുറമേയുള്ള, പുറ, വ്യതിരിക്ത, ബാഹ്യം
More languagesFewer languages
- extraneous in Kannada
- ಬಾಹ್ಯ, ಅನ್ಯ, ವಿಷಯಕ್ಕೆ ನೇರವಾಗಿ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸದ, ಅಪ್ರಕೃತವಾದ
- extraneous in Arabic
- خَارِجِيّ ḵārijiyy
Examples of extraneous in a sentence
- Where workers poured the additional 11-foot-wide strip of foundation, for example, an extraneous column remains, and differences in the finish of the floor can be seen.2026 May, Julie Belcove, “Farm Fresh”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83, number 4, page 92:
- Reading has come to seem extraneous even to some of the best-educated members of society.2026 July 8, Rose Horowitch, “The End of Reading Is Here”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic...
Synonyms of extraneous
8 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Origin of extraneous
From Latin extrāneus (“from without, strange”). Doublet of strange. Cognate with estrange (verb), Spanish extraño.
Words formed from extraneous
Phrases with extraneous
Words that rhyme with extraneous
Questions about extraneous
- What does extraneous mean?
- Extraneous means not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or beyond a thing; foreign.
- What is extraneous in Tamil?
- Extraneous in Tamil is அயலான, தொடர்பற்ற, புறச்சார்பான. See Extraneous meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use extraneous in a sentence?
- Where workers poured the additional 11-foot-wide strip of foundation, for example, an extraneous column remains, and differences in the finish of the floor can be seen.
- What part of speech is extraneous?
- Extraneous is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce extraneous?
- Extraneous is pronounced /ɛkˈstɹeɪ.ni.əs/ (UK).
Words near extraneous in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: extraneous (page history and authors); extraneous (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); extraneous (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); extraneous (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); extraneous (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); extraneous (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-extraneous.ogg, en-au-extraneous.ogg.
Cite this entry: “extraneous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extraneous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.