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Supernumerary

adjective
1.
More than is needed, desired, or required.  Synonyms: excess, extra, redundant, spare, supererogatory, superfluous, surplus.  "Found some extra change lying on the dresser" , "Yet another book on heraldry might be thought redundant" , "Skills made redundant by technological advance" , "Sleeping in the spare room" , "Supernumerary ornamentation" , "It was supererogatory of her to gloat" , "Delete superfluous (or unnecessary) words" , "Extra ribs as well as other supernumerary internal parts" , "Surplus cheese distributed to the needy"






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"Supernumerary" Quotes from Famous Books



... Johnson, however, says that "burr" means the lobe, or lap of the ear; and those who can fancy such a resemblance between this and the covering of our acorn, are at liberty to use the two final consonants. Having commenced stereotyping with this supernumerary, for the sake of uniformity that mode of spelling, wrong as we think it, has been continued ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... table to each participant in turn, was the customary manner of beginning the Passover supper. At this solemn meal Jesus appears to have observed the essentials of the Passover procedure; but we have no record of His compliance with the many supernumerary requirements with which the divinely established memorial of Israel's deliverance from bondage had been invested by traditional custom and rabbinical prescription. As we shall see, the evening's proceedings in that upper ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... an explanation of the meaning of the term, when Mr. Howel informed him that an 'extra' in America meant a supernumerary coach, to carry any excess of the ordinary number of passengers; whereas an 'exclusive extra' meant a coach expressly engaged ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... clearly their due. But it was not so pleasant to look at Crosbie, who was fidgeting to get away to his office, to whom no power of choosing in the matter was really given, and whom the men regarded as being altogether supernumerary. The ladies had promised to be at the shop by half-past ten, so that Crosbie should reach his office at eleven—or a little after. But it was nearly eleven before they left the Gazebee residence, and it was very evident that half-an-hour among the carpets would ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... steerage to the galley, where he found Mulgrum engaged in washing those from the ward room, which he had brought out some time before. The steward looked at the deaf mute with more interest than he had regarded him before. He was a supernumerary on board, and any one who had anything to do called Pink to do it. Another waiter was greatly needed, and Mr. Nawood, the chief steward, had engaged one, but he had failed to come on board before the ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... Pigs Nail Puncture Neck Swelling Pregnancy of Mare Paralysis Pneumonia in Pigs Paralysis of Sow Rickets in Hogs Scabby Swelling Skin Disease, Fatal Scours Side-bone Shoulder injury Stiff joints Swelling in Dewlap Sterile Cow Supernumerary Teat Sore Eyes in Pigs Sow, Over-fat Tuberculous Milk Uterus, Diseased Urination Defective Warts on Horse Worms in Horses Wound Sore ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... shocking one, and, for the time, totally unfitted him for service. He left the city in a litter, while the passage to the country still remained open for retreat, in obedience to an order of General Lincoln for the departure of all idle mouths, "all supernumerary officers, and all officers unfit for duty." Marion retired to his residence in St. John's parish. Here, suffering in mind and body, he awaited with impatience the progress of events, with which, however much ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... from the fact that we are balked by halting versification. Much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock; so, too, does a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable. In the one case, we know that there is an erroneous preadjustment; and we can scarcely doubt that there is one in the other. But if we habitually preadjust our perceptions to the measured movement of verse, the physical analogy above given renders it probable that by so doing ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... I played supernumerary parts in many shows that winter including Richard III and other Shakespearean plays. At the battle of Bosworth field where Richard cries: "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse," the supers in the army were clattering ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... offence, I profess to mean real English beggars in the literal meaning of the word, as it is usually understood by protestants. It seems, the Justices of the Peace and parish officers in the western coasts of England, have a good while followed the trade of exporting hither their supernumerary beggars, in order to advance the English Protestant interest among us; and, these they are so kind to send over gratis, and duty free. I have had the honour more than once to attend large cargoes of them from Chester to Dublin: and I was then so ignorant ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... vessel was again met at a convenient distance from the English shore by smaller boats if a favourable signal had been flashed from the land; and, using the darkness of the night, once more both the cargo and the supernumerary men were put into the boats, after which the latter ran the stuff ashore in casks already slung and in bales, while the smack headed for her harbour whence she had set out. As she had just the same small crew ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... Australia, are to be entered in the Rattlesnake under the provisions of the Act of Parliament. The books of the Bramble are to be closed, and she is to be considered as no longer in commission; and you are here by authorised, after being joined by her and by the Castlereagh, to enter ten supernumerary seaman for wages and victuals in the Rattlesnake (making her total complement 190) to enable you effectively to man ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... a few supernumerary young men and a mandolin orchestra were loaded into an enormous baroto, and ten sturdy brown backs bent forward as the boatmen pushed with all their strength against the great bamboo poles, which looked as if they ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... Chaos ere the Infant Sun Was rolled together, or had tried its beams Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly Taper By glimmering through thy low-browed misty vaults, Furred round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime, Lets fall a supernumerary horror, And only serves to make Thy night more ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... arguments to show the policy of this measure, even with reference to agriculture, arising out of the general positions I have stated, such as the advantage husbandmen find in a manufacturing country, in placing their weak or supernumerary children to trades, and procuring a number of hands on a short notice, at any of those critical periods, which so frequently occur in the culture of land, without being compelled to maintain them all the year, which increase ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... It is not very material how many stems the vine may have in its first growth, but now one only, if strong, or two at the most, should be suffered to rise and cling to the prop: more would be superfluous and only weaken the whole. The supernumerary shoots however are usefully employed, being either conducted through narrow trenches to adjacent chinkareens whose vines have failed, or taken off at the root and transplanted to others more distant, where, coiled round and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... When I was a young shaver, having lived in the world some twenty years or so, I was engaged as a sort of supernumerary clerk in the house of Wilson and Brown at Calcutta; and, having no one else who could be so easily spared, they determined to despatch me on a business negotiation to one of the native princes, about eight hundred ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... been pleased to approve of the promotion of Colonel (local Lieutenant-General) Sir W. P. Symons, K.C.B., commanding 4th Division Natal Field Force, to be Major-General, supernumerary to the establishment, for distinguished service ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... money which had been partly contributed by a family of a deceased brother in the ministry, he says: 'I received the Spanish and British angels, equalling in number the Apostles, the Graces, and the Elements, with a supernumerary one of the Seraphic order.... I do not rejoice so much in them (although these commutable pieces of money are at present very useful to me) as I do at the renewing of the memory of my deceased friends, and the prospect of our friendship being perpetuated in their posterity, who have given ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... horses. They seem to have had but a single pole. Where three horses were used, one must therefore have been attached merely by a rope or thong, like the side horses of the Greeks, and, can scarcely have been of much service for drawing the vehicle. He seems rightly regarded as a supernumerary, intended to take the place of one of the others, should either be disabled by a wound or accident. It is not easy to determine from the sculptures how the two draught horses were attached to the pole. Where chariots are represented ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... the commencement of the storm, were only partially clothed, when they made their escape; but the seamen on the watch, in consequence of the heavy rain, having cased themselves in double or treble dresses, supplied their supernumerary articles of clothing to those who had none. We happily succeeded in bringing away two compasses from the binnacle, and a few candles from the cuddy-table, one of them lighted; one bottle of wine, and another of porter, were handed to us, with the tablecloth and a knife, which proved ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... wind. The Cocon d'Or did homage to its first master by sending its most splendid products for the gratification of Mademoiselle Cabirolle, now called Florentine. The magnificence which suddenly burst upon her apartment in the rue de Vendome would have satisfied the most ambitious supernumerary. After being the master of the ship for seven years, Cardot now found himself towed along by a force of unlimited caprice. But the luckless old gentleman was fond of his tyrant. Florentine was to close his eyes; he meant to leave her ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... it is, that the Hebrew ladies, like those of Greece, were no strangers to the half-mantle—fastened by a clasp in front of each shoulder, and suffered to flow in free draperies down the back; this was an occasional and supernumerary garment flung over the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... over clenched teeth as he mastered self, agony and horse in one man's effort. Fight how he would, heel, tooth and eye all flashing, Bagh was forced to hold his rightful place in front of the squadron, precisely the right distance behind the last supernumerary of the squadron ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... a super you mean a supernumerary, Footelights," said Mr. Cheke, the gentleman Commoner of Corpus, "then the Pet isn't one. He's the leading character of what you would ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... of this military stranger, it was ascertained by the crew, that there was a supernumerary on board by the name of Williams; for it is as impossible for the commander and officers of a man-of-war to keep a secret in the cabin, as it is for twelve "good men and true," locked up in a jury-room. The new-comer seemed to have free access ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... on the road again, and the Express was resumed. Slade, who was greatly pleased with our exploit, now assigned me as special or supernumerary rider. Thereafter while I was with him I had a comparatively easy time of it, riding only now and then, and having plenty of opportunity for seeking after the new ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... see it, is only made up of such supernumerary arguments against an independent power in the church, as he could not, without nauseous repetition, scatter into the body of his book: And it is detached, like a forlorn hope, to blunt the enemy's sword that intendeth to attack him. Now, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... learned in many arts, when one day the gardener Sent, from whom I was accustomed to buy plants for my mixtures—he rents a plot of ground from the temple of Seti—Sent brought me a new-born child that had been born with six toes; I was to remove the supernumerary toe by my art. The pious mother of the child was lying ill of fever, or she never would have allowed it; I took the screaming little wretch—for such things are sometimes curable. The next morning, a few hours after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... be considered in the scale in which are considered similar services in other parts of the world. But I might have expected to be placed on the staff in India; and yet if it had not been for the lamented death of General Fraser, General Smith's arrival would have made me supernumerary. This is perfectly well known to the army, and is the subject of a good deal ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... both in kind and amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support. The farmer paid 10 s. in the pound in poor-rates, and was in addition compelled to employ supernumerary labourers not required on his farm, at a cost of from 100 l. to 250 l. a year; the labourer had no need to hasten himself to seek work, or to please his master, or to put a restraint upon his temper, having all the slave's security for support, without the slave's liability ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... pastured on sandy or gravelly soil. The molar teeth may also show irregular wear from similar causes, or from a disease or malformation of the jaw. Their edges may become sharp, or it may happen that a molar tooth has been accidentally fractured. It may also occur that a supernumerary tooth has developed in an unusual position, and that it interferes with the natural and regular ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... the car, and Brodie grinned with pleasure. The chauffeur was beginning to like the excitement of acting as supernumerary on the staff ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... time after my arrival here, I had very little employment, there being a scribe already in the establishment, whose experience and industry required no assistance from me. I thus found myself a supernumerary—a character that did not suit me, but I was obliged to content myself for the present. We were joined early in winter by some of the gentlemen in charge of posts, when we managed to pass the time very agreeably. Mr. D——, superintendent of the district, played ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... of officers of the guard will be limited to the necessities of the service and efficient instruction; inexperienced officers may be detailed as supernumerary officers of the guard for purposes of ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... Larry relaxed in relief. "Whoever this practical joker is, we will show him he is wasting his talents—even though it means carrying a supernumerary for the rest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... wedding festivities was on a proportionate scale of thoroughness. They killed the four supernumerary chickens that had just begun to crow, and the little curly-tailed barrow pig, in preference to the sow; not having been put up fattening for more than five weeks it was excellent small meat, and therefore more delicate and likely to suit ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... Panama from the mother country, burning with desire to make their fortunes in the New World. They caught much more eagerly than the old and wary colonists at the golden bait held out to them; and with their addition, and that of a few supernumerary stragglers who hung about the town, Almagro found himself at the head of a reinforcement of at least eighty men, with which, having laid in a fresh supply of stores, he again set sail for the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... shows that the plant had opposite leaves, and supernumerary buds at the sides of the true axillary ones; the true axillary buds are smaller than those at the sides. It would, in such cases, be reasonable to suppose that the supernumerary buds were floral ones, and that the plant blooms before the leaves expand. The annual growths ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... conduct.... It so happened that her negro husband possessed a sixth digit on each hand, but there was no peculiarity of any kind in the white man, yet when the mulatto child was born it actually presented the deformity of a supernumerary finger.' Taruffi, the celebrated Italian teratologist, in speaking of the subject, says: 'Our knowledge of this strange fact is by no means recent for Fienus, in 1608, said that most of the children born in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... introduced into society. The great economy of such a measure must be obvious to everyone, seeing that, instead of each coach changing horses between London and Edinburgh, say twenty-five times, requiring a hundred horses, besides the supernumerary ones kept at every stage in case of accidents, the whole journey of several coaches would be performed with the simple expense of one steam engine. No animal strength will be able to give that uniform and regular acceleration to our commercial intercourse which may be accomplished ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... philosophy; everything is relative, my dear young friend, from the king who stands in the way of his successor, to the employee who keeps his rival out of a place. Now, in the event of the king's death, his successor inherits a crown,—when the employee dies, the supernumerary steps into his shoes, and receives his salary of twelve thousand livres. Well, these twelve thousand livres are his civil list, and are as essential to him as the twelve millions of a king. Every one, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place on the social ladder, and is beset by stormy ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... order of seniority. According to the regulations, when one arm of the service was overmanned, the superfluous officers were to be transferred to another. This was now the case with the artillery, and Buonaparte, as a supernumerary, was on June thirteenth again ordered to the west, but this time only as a mere infantry general of brigade. He appears to have felt throughout life more vindictiveness toward Aubry, the man whom he believed to have been the author of this particular ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... etc. On the other hand, there are factors which, although having inherited bases, owe their expression almost wholly to outside influences. Professor Morgan, for example, has found a strain of fruit flies whose offspring in cold weather are usually born with supernumerary legs. In hot weather they are practically normal. If this strain were bred only in the tropics, the abnormality would probably not be noticed; on the other hand, if it were bred only in cold regions, it would be set down ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... were accustomed, yearly, to send into the States a train of wagons, for the purpose of transporting their goods. The opportunity, therefore, presented for Kit Carson to gratify his wish. In the spring of 1842, one of these caravans started with which Kit Carson traveled as a supernumerary. When it arrived within the boundary lines of the State of Missouri, he parted from his compagnons de voyage and went in quest of his relatives and friends, whom, now, he had not seen for over sixteen years. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... sit late at the tavern, without the knowledge of his father; and I was ordered by my mistress to let him in silently to his bed under the counter, and to be very careful to take away his candle. The hours which I was obliged to watch, whilst the rest of the family was in bed, I considered as supernumerary, and, having no business assigned for them, thought myself at liberty to spend them my own way: I kept myself awake with a book, and for some time liked my state the better for this opportunity of reading. At last, the upper-maid found my book, and showed it to my mistress, who told me, that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... are thoroughly sensible how necessary it is to support themselves by these collateral assistances, and therefore always lay their claim to some supernumerary accomplishments, which are wholly foreign to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gathering grapes for them from the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... of all the reproductive organs in one individual. True, the term hermaphrodite is often applied to certain persons in whom there is some malformation, deficiency, or excess, of the genital organs. These congenital deformities consisting of combined increase or deficiency, supernumerary organs, or transposition of them, which usually render generation physically impossible, have been called bisexual hermaphrodism and classed as monstrosities. We have many published accounts of them, hence, further reference to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... resting or pupal stage of female Coccidae; also to a supernumerary stage before the formation of the pupa, ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... battalions and a number of surplus officers who had managed to get over to England supernumerary to their battalions were left behind on the Plain as ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... Bay, I had become acquainted with a Scotch gentleman, who was employed on the medical staff of the U.S. army, I believe, as a supernumerary, or candidate for a commission as a surgeon. He was a most agreeable companion, of good natural parts, fluent in conversation, intelligent in remark, free from egotism, and well educated, I believe, at ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... Maxwell, a Scotchman who had long traded in the Congo, and who subsequently published a chart of the lower river proposed, at the end of the last century, to take from England six supernumerary boats for rowing and sailing, which could be carried by thirty people and portaged round the cataracts. This gave rise to Captain Tuckey's first error, depending upon labour and provisions, which were not to be had "for love or money" anywhere on the Congo above ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... story badly," he said, with a curt laugh, "and spoilt it. You have soon seen through it. Mogente made a will on his death-bed—which was, by the way, witnessed by Leon de Mogente as a supernumerary, not a legal witness—just to show that all was square and ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... the ministry of finance as supernumerary at the same time as Colleville, who has been mentioned already as his intimate friend. In opposition to the well-regulated, gloomy household of Thuillier, social nature had provided that of Colleville; and if it is impossible not to remark that this fortuitous ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were—the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... morality of this arrangement was acquiesced in, and its adoption generally approved. But nothing practical came of it. By-and-by, in the ordinary evolution of things, the pressure of competition for seats died off, and the supernumerary hat disappeared from the scene. This Session the ancient trouble returned with increased force, owing to the peculiar circumstances in which political parties are subdivided. The Irish members insisting upon retaining ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... death-watches; and was the other day almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog that howled in the stable, at a time when she lay ill of the toothache. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life, and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror with which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... her," said he smiling; "I had, it is true, no money to buy a ticket; but I went to the leader of the supernumeraries, and asked whether I might not act as a supernumerary for one evening in Norma: I was accepted and habited as a Roman soldier, with a long sword by my side, and thus got to the theatre, where I could hear her better than any body else, for I stood close to her. Ah, how she sung, how she played! I could not help crying; but they were angry at ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... these four persons. I was, just at that epoch, in one of those moody frames of mind which make a man abnormally inquisitive about trifles: and I confess, with shame, that I busied myself in a variety of ill-bred and preposterous conjectures about this matter of the supernumerary state-room. It was no business of mine, to be sure, but with none the less pertinacity did I occupy myself in attempts to resolve the enigma. At last I reached a conclusion which wrought in me great wonder why I had not arrived ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... confidence, and peace, and every limb and ingredient of happiness enwrapped; for joy includes all, and fear and joy consist together, nay, constitute one another. The women departed from the sepulchre,[92] the women who were made supernumerary apostles, apostles to the apostles; mothers of the church, and of the fathers, grandfathers of the church, the apostles themselves; the women, angels of the resurrection, went from the sepulchre with fear and joy; they ran, says the text, and they ran upon those ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... preparation made, or was, in fact, appointed. The old committee had emphatically protested against the dismissal, and published a resolution condemnatory of it, as an inexcusable cruelty. Although twenty per cent. of the labouring population were turned adrift in that locality, not one supernumerary was disemployed. No pay-clerk lost his salary, though his labour was diminished by one-fifth; no check-clerk was dismissed, though there were twenty per cent. fewer to check; no steward or under-steward was displaced. Such are specimens of the accounts from ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... profit which England receives by the transmittal thither of two-thirds of the revenues of this whole kingdom; it hath another mighty advantage by making our country a receptacle, wherein to disburthen themselves of their supernumerary pretenders to offices; persons of second-rate merit in their own country; who, like birds of passage, most of them thrive and fatten here, and fly off when their credit and employments are at an end. So that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... by M. du Bruel, a young author who, after working in collaboration with divers celebrities, had now produced a piece professedly entirely his own. It had been specially composed for the leading lady, a young actress who began her stage career as a supernumerary at the Gaite, and had been promoted to small parts for the last twelvemonth. But though Mlle. Florine's acting had attracted some attention, she obtained no engagement, and the Panorama accordingly had carried her off. Coralie, another actress, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... any thing which makes human nature appear ridiculous to beings of superior faculties, it must be pride. They know so well the vanity of those imaginary perfections that swell the heart of man, and of those little supernumerary advantages, whether in birth, fortune, or title, which one man enjoys above another, that it must certainly very much astonish, if it does not very much divert them, when they see a mortal puffed up, and valuing ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... and usefully occupied as it had ever been before." Of course there was an outcry against the Superintendent of Finance; "he rather wondered that the clamor was not more loud and tremendous." He remembered that "one hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation. Was it to be wondered at, if this swarm should raise a buzz about him?" Gerry fought on almost singlehanded, but he could not refute the ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... Fable, detaining the mind too long in the mesh of expression, would have become metaphysical dogma. I should have connected the given fact with imagined facts, which even if by chance real—for such a goddess may, for all we know, actually float in the fourth dimension—are quite supernumerary in my world, and never, by any possibility, can become parts or extensions of the experience they are thought to explain. The gods are demonstrable only as hypotheses, but as hypotheses they ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... as if to be ready for a fight; Madame Filomel glided, or rather rolled, towards the door; while Kerplonne put his hand into his pocket, as if to assure himself that his supernumerary optic was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... large upon the horizon as the read, white, and blue emblem of our national greatness to the truly patriotic soul. Little did I dream, as I stood in the rear line of the court, clad in all the gorgeous regalia of a vocal supernumerary, and swelling the noisy welcome to the advancing Lohengrin, with my apology for a voice, how intimately associated with these lustrous headlights I was soon to be, and as Raffles Holmes and I poured out our souls in song not ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... buffalo skin in front of the cook-tent, content with all the world and for the moment with himself. Six months ago he had engaged as an axeman in the surveyors' gang at $30 per month and "found," being regarded more in the light of a supernumerary and more or less of a burden than anything else. Now he was drawing double the wage as rodman, and, of all the gang, stood second to none in McIvor's regard. In this new venture he had come nearer to making good than ever before in his life. So in full content with himself he ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... reports devoted to the Jorance case, his own part passed almost unnoticed. The Eclaireur des Vosges summoned up his evidence in a couple of lines. When all was said, he was and would be no more than a supernumerary. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... troop, being in all twenty-seven men, very well armed, and provided with everything but victuals; we had two carpenters among us, a gunner, and, which was worth all the rest, a surgeon or doctor; that is to say, he was an assistant to a surgeon at Goa, and was entertained as a supernumerary with us. The carpenters had brought all their tools, the doctor all his instruments and medicines, and indeed we had a great deal of baggage, that is to say, on the whole, for some of us had little more than the clothes on our backs, of whom I was one; but I had one thing ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... constitute a sorry link in the chain of American writers—my plays have all been ad captandum: a kind of amateur performance, with no claim to the character of a settled, regular, or domiciliated writer for the green-room—a sort of volunteer supernumerary—a dramatic writer by "particular desire, and for this night only," as they say in the bills of the play; my "line," as you well know, has been in the more rugged paths of politics, a line in which there is more fact than poetry, more feeling ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah

... slightly expanded; fingers from shortest to longest, 1-2-4-3, first only slightly shorter than second; three palmar tubercles; inner palmar tubercle about one third size of large median tubercle; outer tubercle about one tenth size of large median tubercle; four supernumerary palmar tubercles; tips of toes slightly wider than narrowest part of digits; toes from shortest to longest, 1-2-5-3-4, second only slightly shorter than fifth; inner metatarsal tubercle about four times size of small outer metatarsal tubercle; supernumerary tubercles ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb

... the spot selected for a mission, there were many considerations in its favor. In the immediate neighborhood of Kuruman the chiefs hated the gospel, because it deprived them of their supernumerary wives. In the region farther north, this feeling had not yet established itself; on the contrary, there was an impression favorable to Europeans, and a desire for their alliance. These Bechuana tribes ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... head is supported upon a rounded stem, the joints of which are elaborately articulated with one another; and the fringed arms are composed each of a double series of alternating calcareous pieces. The Palaeozoic Urchins, with their supernumerary rows of plates, the Cystideans, and the Pentremites have finally disappeared; but both Star-fishes and Brittle-stars continue to be represented. One of the latter—namely, the Aspidura loricata of Goldfuss (fig. 143)—is highly characteristic of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... disposed to question my testimony to the fact." From this account, however, it is manifest that the difficulty of "stage feeding," as Kelly calls it, is not invariably felt by all actors alike. And probably, although the appetites of the superior players may often fail them, the supernumerary or the representative of minor characters could generally contrive to make a respectable meal if the circumstances of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... exclusively to those of the opposite sex. Thus, a horn-like projection on the skin peculiar to the Lambert family was transmitted from the father to his sons and grandsons alone. So mothers have through several generations transmitted to their daughters alone supernumerary fingers, color-blindness, and other deformities and diseases. As a general rule, any disease acquired during the life of either parent, strongly tends to be inherited by the offspring of the same sex rather than the opposite. We have spoken of the apparently reverse ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... plant are oneflowered and provided with two linear glumes or outer scales. Of the inner scales or palets, the outer one is three-lobed at the summit, hence the varietal name of Hordeum vulgare trifurcatum. The central lobe is oblong and hollow, covering a small supernumerary floret inserted [204] at its base. The two lateral lobes are narrower, sometimes linear, and are often prolonged into an awn, which is generally turned away from the center of the spike. The central lobe sometimes bears two ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from the horror which might else gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such objectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for turning to account the supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms, which, in those days, both at Dublin and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, by cooking and eating them. This was an extravaganza, though really bolder and more coarsely practical than mine, which did not provoke ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... left behind for a day, with intense satisfaction and content. They were mine. Hildreth was my woman, Daniel had been my child for the space he was with us. And I held Darrie in friendly tenderness, much as the bourgeois business man holds the supernumerary women of his household, though she was by no means that, nor was she in any way ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... good soldier will be silent and attentive, wait for orders, and reserve his fire till he is sure of its doing execution;—the officers to be particularly careful of this. The colonels and commanding officers of regiments are to see their supernumerary officers so posted as to keep their men to their duty; and it may not be amiss for the troops to know, that, if any infamous rascal shall attempt to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without the orders of his commanding officers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... became profoundly silent. The bull Juancho had to kill was of formidable breed; seven horses, stretched lifeless upon the sand, their bowels protruding from hideous wounds, told of his fury and vigour. The two picadores had left the arena, sorely bruised and crippled by numerous falls, and the supernumerary waited in the corridor, foot in stirrup and lance in fist, ready to replace them. The chulos prudently kept themselves in the vicinity of the palisade, one foot on the wooden ledge which aids them to leap it in case of danger; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... rested his defence upon the license allowed to that branch of his profession, which, as it permits all sorts of singular and irregular combinations, may be allowed to extend itself so far as to bestow a limb supernumerary on a favourite subject. But the cause of a deceased friend is sacred; and I disdain to bottom it so superficially. I have visited the sign in question, which yet swings exalted in the village of Langdirdum; and I am ready to depone upon the oath that what has ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... lace you are making, depends how many pairs of bobbins you will have to use. But as one part of the lace is often made before the other, or you have to put on supernumerary bobbins, you fasten up those not in use on one side with pins, ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... more than once had business with M. Lecoq; she has need of him and fears him as she does fire. She, therefore, welcomed the detective and his companion—whom she took for one of his colleagues—somewhat as the supernumerary of a theatre would greet his manager if the latter chanced to pay him a ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... choicest faculties had a chance of developing; she swallowed many insults to her pride, which was constantly suffering under the husband who so calmly walked the stage as supernumerary in the drama of her life. Compelled to bury her wealth of love, she showed only the surface to the world. Now and then she would try to rouse herself, try to form some manly resolution; but she was kept in leading strings by the need for money. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... which called for so much exertion as a runaway, and that, even had they been so disposed, Edith was entirely competent to manage them. The girl had not lived in the foothill town since childhood without becoming something of a horse-woman. But Dave pretended not to know that he was a supernumerary. To have acted otherwise would have seemed ungrateful to Mr. Duncan. And presently the drives began to have ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... free; toes two-thirds webbed; no supernumerary tubercles on soles or palms; no tarsal fold; elongate anal sheath, anal opening on lower surface of thighs; head broad, interorbital space 2.5 times width of upper eyelid; snout subacuminate in dorsal profile, strongly sloping in lateral profile; tympanum ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch

... give the boy the name he bears. However, he was as bright a child as ever frolicked about a plantation till he was some five or six years old. His mother had been a house-servant before she was sent to Knapp-of-Reeds, and being really a supernumerary there, my father hired her a year or two afterward as a nurse for my mother, who has long been an invalid, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... hearing Death-Watches; and was the other Day almost frighted out of her Wits by the great House-Dog, that howled in the Stable at a time when she lay ill of the Tooth-ach. Such an extravagant Cast of Mind engages Multitudes of People, not only in impertinent Terrors, but in supernumerary Duties of Life, and arises from that Fear and Ignorance which are natural to the Soul of Man. The Horrour with which we entertain the Thoughts of Death (or indeed of any future Evil), and the Uncertainty of its Approach, fill a melancholy Mind ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... ill luck would have it for them, a Janissary, who had mixed in the crowd and had taken a close survey of the supernumerary head, exclaimed in a mixture of doubt and amazement, "Allah, Allah, il Allah! these are no infidel's heads. One is the head of our lord and master, the Aga of the Janissaries." Upon which, seeing more of his companions, he called ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light. In short, she seems to have designed the head as the cupola to the most glorious of her works; and when we load it with such a pile of supernumerary ornaments, we destroy the symmetry of the human figure, and foolishly contrive to call off the eye from great and real beauties, to childish ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... being inducted into these comfortable quarters in his Majesty's Tower, was to bribe his keeper to wink at his peccadilloes. A few cups of that supernumerary sack, and an occasional piece of silver, were worth expending on the safe carriage of his letters and other necessities which might in time arise. He made affectionate inquiries as to the keeper's domestic relations, and discovered ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... sort of labor which machines, commercial freedom, and progress of all sorts, gradually annihilate; not useful labor, but labor which has become superfluous, supernumerary, objectless, and without result. On the other hand, protection restores it to activity; it replaces us under the water, so as to give us an opportunity of pumping; it forces us to ask for gold from the inaccessible national mine, rather ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... nights in the year on that sinister night when, by a coincidence of chronology, the Christian persecutor celebrated the birth of his Saviour? Through misty eyes she saw her husband's face, stern and rugged, yet made venerable by the flowing white of his locks and beard, as with the supernumerary taper he prepared to light the wax candles in the nine-branched candlestick of silver. He wore a long, hooded mantle reaching to the feet, and showing where it fell back in front a brown gaberdine clasped by a girdle. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... made the woman and the children in the pantomime of the "New Circus" laugh most, was the incessant quarrel between an enormous Danish hound and a poor old supernumerary, who was blackened like a negro minstrel, and dressed like a Mulatto woman. The dog was always annoying him, followed him, snapped at his legs, and at his old wig, with his sharp teeth, and tore his coat and his silk pocket-handkerchief, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... reconcile us to our condition, prevent all the supernumerary troubles arising from imagination, distant fears, impatience—all uneasiness, except that which necessarily arises from the calamities themselves we may be under. How many of our cares should we by this means be disburdened ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... up Halidon, nor did I hear from him till the middle of the winter. Once or twice, meanwhile, I had seen him in the back of his wife's opera box; but Mrs. Halidon had grown so resplendent that she reduced her handsome husband to a supernumerary. In January the papers began to talk of the Halidon ball; and in due course I received a card for it. I was not a frequenter of balls, and had no intention of going to this one; but when the day came some obscure impulse moved me to set aside my rule, and toward midnight I presented ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... historic river. He knew nothing of the cold, prosaic world of selfish interests. The time had not yet come when, in bitterness of spirit, and wrapping his mantle about him against the chill wind of indifference, he should say: "To-day my sole ambition is to be a supernumerary in the vast human comedy, and when my silent role is ended, to withdraw behind the scenes, neither hissed nor applauded, making my ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... who have the title of officer. If such offices are those of the old men—that is, those offices that were introduced, and which have always existed, since the creation of the infantry [there], and which have always been filled by such men—there shall be no innovation. In case that other and supernumerary offices shall have been added, this is what you are to reduce, because this number of officers is costly and only serves for expense and the ambition that there be many to command, and that the infantry ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... trembling with the cold and exposure he had undergone, yet with his attention unflinchingly concentrated upon Rutton; and, finally, Amber, a little out of the picture and quite unconsidered of the others, not without a certain effect as of a supernumerary standing in the wings and watching the development ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... of the Stole, become Secretary of State—Lord Holderness being removed with very little ceremony indeed, but with a pension, to make room for him. He and Mr. Pitt together have made good courtiers of the Tories; Lords Oxford, Litchfield, and Bruce, being supernumerary lords, and Norbonne Berkeley, Northey, and I think George Pitt, supernumerary Grooms of the Bedchamber. Sir Francis Dashwood is Treasurer of the Chamber, in the room of Charles Townshend, who was made Secretary at War upon Lord ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various

... on the coast, we returned to Kuchin on Saturday the 19th, when we found that death had deprived us of our only musician on board the ship, a loss which was much felt by the crew, as he contributed much to their amusement. One of the supernumerary boys had also fallen a victim to the dysentery; but, although we deplored our loss, we had great reason to be thankful that it had been no greater, as on the day we left Kuchin, we had upwards of seventy men on the sick report. The same day, at noon, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... that sir John Chickwell might very well afford to keep more servants than were found in the family of a man who had not half his fortune. Mrs Baynard ate no supper that evening; but was seized with a violent fit, which completed her triumph over the spirit of her consort. The two supernumerary servants were added — The family plate was sold for old silver, and a new service procured; fashionable furniture was provided, and the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... edge of the pier. A sudden impulse seized him. At one bound he passed from the pier to the boat, which was already some half-dozen feet away, and took the seat and oar of the injured man. In the confusion and darkness, the others thought he was one of the supernumerary boatmen, and took no further notice of him. The boat was shoved back, the life-jacket was transferred to Guy, and the boatman was ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... impossible to catch him and impossible to prove anything against him. At last the head forester, who had a secret reverence for his extraordinary powers of endurance and unrivalled skill in woodcraft, had made terms with him and employed him as a sort of supernumerary upon the government establishment. From that day, Wastei, who would have waged war to the death with all regular foresters, had surrendered at discretion to the kindness shown him, and had given up poaching for ever. Berbel could not help liking ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... their own persons, for the constable had M. de Guise, and the Prince of Conde Admiral de Coligny, who showed equally well to the front in the melley. . . . Finally I wish to bring forward another matter, which will be supernumerary because it happened after the battle; and that is, the courteous and honorable behavior of the Duke of Guise victorious towards the Prince of Conde a prisoner; which most men, on one side as well as on the other, did not at all think he would have been disposed to exhibit, for it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot



Words linked to "Supernumerary" :   unneeded, person, someone, mortal, soul, thespian, actor, individual, role player, somebody, unnecessary, player, histrion



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