Word.ws English Dictionary

surplusage

surplusage noun: a surplus; a superabundance.

Noun

surplusage (countable and uncountable, plural surplusages)

  1. (archaic) A surplus; a superabundance.
    • If then thee list my offred grace to vse, / Take what thou please of all this surplusage; / If thee list not, leaue haue thou to refuse […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature.1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation
  2. Matter in pleading which is not necessary or relevant to the case, and may be rejected.
  3. A greater disbursement than the charge of the accountant amounts to.
    • one third-part of the surplusage of the estate of any person dying intetate, hall be distributed to his widow,and the reidue amongt his children by equal portions1802–1819, Abraham Rees, The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature

Forms of surplusage

pluralsurplusages

Origin of surplusage

From Medieval Latin surplusagium, from surplus.

Questions about surplusage

What does surplusage mean?
Surplusage means a surplus; a superabundance.
What part of speech is surplusage?
Surplusage is a noun.
What is the plural of surplusage?
The plural of surplusage is surplusages.

Words near surplusage in the dictionary

  1. surplus killings
  2. surplus labour
  3. surplus to requirements
  4. surplus value
  5. surplus values
  6. surplusage
  7. surplusages
  8. surplused
  9. surpluses
  10. surplusing
  11. surplussed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: surplusage (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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