superfluous

in a sentence

The entire manoeuvre proved superfluous; no one came except Lewicki, who looked in towards evening, both curious and anxious to find out how I was.  (source) Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Pianist, 1998

After sixteen hours of labor, they were all exhausted--Lacy, the patient, and the father-to-be, who was facing zero-hour with the dawning realization that he was superfluous, that right now, his wife wanted her midwife much more than she wanted him.  (source) Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes, 2007

"...lovers to have ..." I relish that last phrase. Its awkwardness (the "to have" seems superfluous) gives it substance and heft.  (source) Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted, 1993

No mouths, no sex organs— all these were superfluous.  (source) Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain, 1969

Most men ... are so occupied with the ... superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.  (source) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness.†  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

I saw no whipping going on, but a couple of big, old Vikings were roaring away, giving mostly superfluous orders and pushing people around.  (source) Katherine Applegate, Everworld - Search For Senna, 1999

who by character and constitution preferred and, for all his seeming insensitivity, immensely enjoyed the useful, immediate, palpable: ruefully smiling to himself at the neatness of phrase in a null and void affidavit, ruefully grinning at the firm, responsible solidity of the newly wired-up round of a chair (the veritable image of his soul: good wire, no loop without its function, a small detail in relation to the whole but necessary, however distasteful to people inclined toward elegance, and admirable in its small way: superfluously strung: final) so that, knowing he was not his father, he had been satisfied with what he was, had cleverly revelled in it: had not built huge barns as the C†  (source) John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues, 1972

I do not feel that the dignity of the court will suffer if we remove a few superfluous outer garments.  (source) Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind, 1955

Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself—his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention.†  (source) T. H. White, The Once and Future King, 1939

She did everything that was needed — cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece — always very slowly and with a curious lack of superfluous motion,  (source) George Orwell, 1984, 1949

You understand," he insisted, superfluously, looking hard at me.†  (source) Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, 1912

We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;--the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.  (source) Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929