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.

You are familiar, I'm sure, with the institution of the gift shop: a business that exists entirely to sell useless treats and temptations, an ode to capitalistic superfluousness.

From Salon • Dec. 21, 2022

As investigators picked through the wreckage in Manhattan, Arlington and Shanksville, Pa., the idea of a 9/11 novel sounded obscene in its redundancy, its obviousness, its galling superfluousness.

From Washington Post • Sep. 5, 2021

The whimsical superfluousness of such stories becomes in the aggregate ninety-nine chapters of “Life,” a massive encyclopedia of the off-kilter quotidian.

From The New Yorker • Jul. 16, 2019

And Hollywood’s ever more polarized face-off with him has imbued the season with a heightened sense of both superfluousness and purpose.

From New York Times • Feb. 1, 2017

Tom was conscious of every fleck of dust on his clothes and shoes; of the skilless knot in his necktie; of the school-desk droop in his shoulders; of the utter superfluousness of his big hands.

From The Quickening by Ashe, E. M.