Sample sentences for EXTRANEOUS

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Definition

not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

More rarely, extraneous can refer to something that does not belong to that in which it is contained (as in "water free of extraneous matter"); or to something coming from an outside source (as in "Extraneous light in the camera spoiled the photograph.")

She has a tendency to get distracted by extraneous details.

extraneous = not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

an issue extraneous to the debate
But to think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort.
Tolstoy, Leo -- Anna Karenina
"You have to realize, Mr. Gennaro," Arnold said, "that there's a lot of extraneous movement out there."
Michael Crichton -- Jurassic Park

extraneous = not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

It had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.
Kate Chopin -- The Awakening

extraneous = not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

It was the extra exclamation point that got me. My mother would call it extraneous, overblown, exuberant.
Sarah Dessen -- Along for the Ride

extraneous = not relevant (unneeded)

Ender toyed with the idea of telling them how important this battle was to him, but decided it would not help them to have an extraneous concern on their minds.
Orson Scott Card -- Ender's Game

extraneous = not relevant to the matter under consideration

And whatever extraneous influence the tannery may have exercised, the calamities of the land belong to it alone, born of wind and rain and weather, immensities not to be tempered by man or his creations.
Kamala Markandaya -- Nectar in a Sieve

extraneous = unimportant to the matter under consideration

What Mavens and Connectors and Salesmen do to an idea in order to make it contagious is to alter it in such a way that extraneous details are dropped and others are exaggerated so that the message itself comes to acquire a deeper meaning.
Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point

extraneous = not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

For six months, Ekman and his collaborator, Wallace Friesen, had been sorting through the footage, cutting extraneous scenes, focusing just on close-ups of the faces of the tribesmen in order to compare the facial expressions of the two groups.
Malcolm Gladwell -- Blink

extraneous = not relevant or important to the matter under consideration

If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirations might go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
Robert Louis Stevenson -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

extraneous = not belonging to that in which it is contained

You clog the action by introducing so much extraneous material.
London, Jack -- Martin Eden
I need you, Eragon and Arya, to help the dwarves collapse extraneous tunnels.
Christopher Paolini -- Eragon
After three days of the headmistress depending on us for everything, we had suddenly become extraneous.
Ransom Riggs -- Hollow City
Extraneous flashes of Mr. Gray.
Don DeLillo -- White Noise
Double time with no one orchestrating any extraneous moves.
Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
I already took the liberty of suggesting that the development of Freemasonry from guilds of respectable manual laborers is historically extraneous.
Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain
"An extraneous element is being introduced into the case," said the Magistrate.
E.M. Forster -- A Passage to India
But to think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort.
Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina
So extraneous, so unnecessary.
Anne Tayler -- A Spool of Blue Thread

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