Definition
Redundant describes what the system would not miss: the phrase that repeats the sentence, the step that duplicates another, the role made unnecessary by a machine. In British English it is the standard word for losing a job — workers are 'made redundant' when the position, not the person, is abolished. Engineering quietly redeems the word: a redundant system is the deliberate backup that saves the aircraft when the primary fails. Whether redundancy is waste or wisdom depends entirely on what is at stake.
Examples
- The editor cut every redundant phrase until the report was half its original length.
- The new software made several manual checks redundant.
- Five hundred workers were made redundant when the plant closed.
Synonyms
superfluous · unnecessary · surplus · expendable · duplicative
In TOEFL & IELTS
IELTS (British English) tests the employment sense — 'make redundant', 'redundancy payments' — in listening and reading about work. For writing, the concept polishes your own style: examiners penalize redundant wording, so knowing what redundancy is helps you delete it. TOEFL engineering passages use the positive sense: redundant systems as designed-in backup.