Dictionary

surplusage en · NOUN

Etymology

From Medieval Latin surplusagium, from surplus.

Meanings

1. (archaic, countable, uncountable) A surplus; a superabundance.
   • A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature. 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation:
   • It may be they required no information whatever; already they may have collected a surplusage[.] 1911, ‘Steel Rudd’, The Book of Dan, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, published 1970, page 87:
   • 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:
2. (countable, uncountable) Matter in pleading which is not necessary or relevant to the case, and may be rejected.
3. (countable, uncountable) A greater disbursement than the charge of the accountant amounts to.
   • 1802–1819, Abraham Rees, The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature 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 portions

Forms