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re·dun·dant (rĭ-dŭndənt)
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adj.
1. Exceeding what is necessary or natural; superfluous.
2. Needlessly wordy or repetitive in expression: a student paper filled with redundant phrases.
3. Of or relating to linguistic redundancy.
4. Chiefly British Dismissed or laid off from work, as for being no longer needed.
5. Electronics Of or involving redundancy in electronic equipment.
6. Of or involving redundancy in the transmission of messages.
7. Genetics
a. Made up of identical repeating nucleotide sequences that do not code for genes. Used of DNA.
b. Relating to or being a gene that has multiple codons for the same amino acid.
[Latin redundāns, redundant-, present participle of redundāre, to overflow : re-, red-, re- + undāre, to surge (from unda, wave; see wed-1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots).]
re·dundant·ly adv.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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