Definition of "surplusage" [sur•plus•age]

• Surplus; excess. (noun)
• An excess of words; verbiage. (noun)
• Law Irrelevant matter in a pleading. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Avoiding surplusage is important, especially since judges have enough to read."
• "Furthermore I said to him, “O my brother, I am wont to cast up my shop accounts at the head of every year, and whatso I shall find of surplusage is between me and thee.”"
• "Evidently, then, self-sacrifice may be wide-spread and may permeate the institutions of ordinary life; being found even in occupations primarily ordered by principles of give and take, where it expresses itself in a kind of surplusage of giving above what is prescribed in the contract."