surplus

Pluralsurpluses, surplusses

Formssurpluses, surplusing, surplused

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The amount that remains once a need or limit has been met; an excess.

   A mild winter left the city with a surplus of road salt.

   The bakery donated its daily surplus to a nearby shelter.

   Similarexcess, overage, abundance, glut, plenty

   Oppositeshortage, deficit, lack

   Note

   The general sense that the financial and legal meanings narrow down. The word came into Middle English from Middle French with its spelling unchanged. It is countable (a surplus of road salt) and uncountable (the daily surplus), and its natural opposites are deficit, shortage and lack. The plural is surpluses, with surplusses as a rarer variant.

2. 2
   adjective

   Being more than is needed or used; constituting an excess.

   Volunteers gathered surplus produce from farms to redistribute it.

   The store cleared out its surplus stock with a weekend sale.

   Similarexcess

   Note

   A noun pressed into adjective service, and not comparable: things are surplus, never "more surplus." Before a noun it is common (surplus population, surplus words). After a verb it usually takes to plus whatever sets the limit: surplus to our needs, surplus to requirements. That phrase is the safe way to say something is no longer wanted.

   The latest shipment of goods is surplus to our needs.

   After the merger, two of the offices were declared surplus to requirements.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An amount in the public treasury that is greater than the government needs for its ordinary expenses.

   The treasury reported a surplus after revenues exceeded the year's spending.

   Lawmakers argued over how to use the unexpected surplus.

   Similarexcess

   Oppositedeficit, shortfall

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The assets that remain after a company's liabilities, debts, and capital stock have been subtracted.

   Auditors calculated the surplus left after all liabilities and capital stock were deducted.

   The board voted to reinvest the surplus rather than issue dividends.

   Oppositedeficit

   Note

   An accountant's subtraction with a twist: capital stock is deducted along with debts and liabilities. Surplus here is therefore not simply what a company owns minus what it owes. It is what remains beyond the capital the shareholders put in. That is why it is the figure a board weighs when choosing between reinvesting and paying dividends.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The amount left over from a fund that was set aside for a particular purpose.

   The committee returned the surplus from the relief fund to its donors.

   Once the road was built, a small surplus remained in the appropriation.

   Similarremainder, balance, excess

   Oppositeshortfall, deficit

   Note

   A narrower legal reckoning than the treasury surplus. That sense measures the government's whole balance against its ordinary needs, but this one looks at a single appropriated fund: money set aside for one purpose, and the part left once that purpose is met. The key word is appropriated, because the leftover is tied to the fund it came from.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To treat people or things as surplus to requirements, as by selling off property or dismissing employees from their jobs.

   Managers often surplus equipment that no longer meets safety standards.

   When the construction contract ended, the remaining engineers were surplused and flown home.

   Similarretire, dismiss, discard

   Oppositeretain

   Note

   An administrator's verb, most at home in the passive and applied to people whose work has run out. In 1952 the US House Committee on Appropriations wrote of an employee whose job was finished that "he was surplused." The spelling wavers between surplusing and surplussing, but the past form is surplused.

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