extraneous
Americanadjective
-
introduced or coming from without; not belonging or proper to a thing; external; foreign.
extraneous substances in our water.
- Synonyms:
- alien, adventitious, extrinsic
- Antonyms:
- intrinsic
-
not pertinent; irrelevant.
an extraneous remark; extraneous decoration.
- Synonyms:
- superfluous, nonessential, inappropriate
adjective
-
not essential
-
not pertinent or applicable; irrelevant
-
coming from without; of external origin
-
not belonging; unrelated to that to which it is added or in which it is contained
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of extraneous
First recorded in 1630–40; from Latin extrāneus “external, foreign,” equivalent to extr(a)- extra- + -ān(us) -an + -eus -eous
Explanation
Extraneous means coming from the outside, like the extraneous noise you hear when you're in a theater and a train passes by. Extraneous can also mean not relevant or essential, like all the extraneous information in your long-winded science report. In Latin, extra means outside, as in extraordinary "outside the ordinary," or extraterrestrial 'coming from outside earth.' (Bonus points––ding! ding!––if you knew that terra is Latin for "earth.") The meaning of extraneous also extends to more abstract things that come from the outside: extraneous details are ones that don't matter.
Vocabulary lists containing extraneous
300 Most Difficult "SAT" Words
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Grade 11, List 5
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Good Riddance
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That they’re the only black principals brings something new to the story, and alliance, and something extraneous to the message of Hedda’s social suffocation and the motive for her misdeeds.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 28, 2025
“I saw myself as this extraneous body that was a bit threatening,” Tres told Salon in a phone interview.
From Salon • May 26, 2025
"He was just quietly sitting there, taking script pages out, cutting them up, removing extraneous stuff like scene descriptions, and then sticking them back onto blank pages," he said.
From BBC • Mar. 1, 2025
News organizations routinely edit interviews, removing extraneous words and redundant phrases.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 26, 2025
But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking her, the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition.
From "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
