Definition of "supernumerary" []

• Exceeding a fixed, prescribed, or standard number; extra. (adjective)
• Exceeding the required or desired number or amount; superfluous. See Synonyms at superfluous. (adjective)
• One that is in excess of the regular, necessary, or usual number. (noun)
• An actor without a speaking part, as one who appears in a crowd scene. (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.

• "For as for that part which seemeth supernumerary, which is prophecy, it is but divine history, which hath that prerogative over human, as the narration may be before the fact as well as after."
• "Another supernumerary was the joiner, a rating only carried in the seventeenth century on great ships with much fancy work about the poop."
• "The existence of the supernumerary was a puzzle, but Olbers solved it for the moment by suggesting that Ceres and Pallas, as he called his captive, might be fragments of a quondam planet, shattered by internal explosion or by the impact of a comet."