Definition

1. Noun:
   • The state of being redundant or superfluous: The condition of being more than what is necessary, normal, or required.
   • The act of repeating something needlessly: The inclusion of extra, unnecessary information or actions.
   • A system design feature in engineering or computing: The duplication of critical components to provide a backup in case of failure, increasing reliability.
   • The situation where an employee's job is no longer required: The state of being dismissed from employment because the position is no longer needed or the work can be done by others.

Examples of Usage

• General superfluity:
  • The redundancy of his lengthy explanation frustrated the audience.
  • There is a lot of redundancy in the document; it could be half as long.
• Engineering/Computing:
  • Data centers use disk redundancy to prevent data loss.
  • The plane's systems have built-in redundancy for safety.
• Employment:
  • The factory closure led to hundreds of redundancies.
  • She was offered a redundancy package after her role was automated.

Advanced Usage

• "to be made redundant": To lose one's job because the position is no longer necessary.
  • Many administrative staff were made redundant after the merger.
• "redundancy of information": In information theory, the part of a message that can be eliminated without losing essential information.
  • Natural language has a high degree of redundancy, which helps us understand it even with noise.

Variants and Related Words

• Redundant (adjective): No longer needed or useful; superfluous.
  • His skills became redundant after the new software was implemented.
• Redundantly (adverb): In a redundant manner.
  • The point was made redundantly several times.

Synonyms

• Superfluity: An unnecessarily or excessively large amount.
• Surplus: An amount of something left over when requirements have been met.
• Repetition: The action of repeating something.

Related Phrases

• Redundancy payment: A sum of money given to an employee who is made redundant.
  • His redundancy payment allowed him to retrain for a new career.
• Redundancy check: In computing, a technique for error detection.
  • A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) verifies data integrity.

Related Idioms

• "To cut out the redundancy": To remove unnecessary or repetitive parts.
  • A good editor knows how to cut out the redundancy to make the text clearer.

Noun

1. repetition of an act needlessly
2. (electronics) a system design that duplicates components to provide alternatives in case one component fails
3. the attribute of being superfluous and unneeded
   • the use of industrial robots created redundancy among workers
4. repetition of messages to reduce the probability of errors in transmission