Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Being more than or in excess of what is needed or required: synonym: superfluous.
  • noun An amount or quantity in excess of what is needed.
  • noun Total assets minus the sum of all liabilities.
  • noun Excess of a corporation's net assets over the face value of its capital stock.
  • noun Excess of receipts over expenditures.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That which remains above what is used or needed; excess beyond what is prescribed or wanted; more than enough; overplus.
  • noun In law, the residuum of an estate after the debts and legacies are paid.
  • Being above what is required; in excess: as, surplus labor; surplus population.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Being or constituting a surplus; more than sufficient
  • noun That which remains when use or need is satisfied, or when a limit is reached; excess; overplus.
  • noun Specifically, an amount in the public treasury at any time greater than is required for the ordinary purposes of the government.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun That which remains when use or need is satisfied, or when a limit is reached; excess; overplus.
  • noun Specifically, an amount in the public treasury at any time greater than is required for the ordinary purposes of the government.
  • noun law The remainder of a fund appropriated for a particular purpose.
  • noun law assets left after liabilities and debts, including capital stock have been deducted.
  • adjective Being or constituting a surplus; more than sufficient; as, surplus revenues; surplus population; surplus words.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective more than is needed, desired, or required
  • noun a quantity much larger than is needed

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, an excess, surplus, from Old French, an excess, from Medieval Latin superplūs : Latin super-, super- + Latin plūs, more; see pelə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French surplus

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Examples

  • Marx used the term surplus value to refer to the commodities produced above and beyond subsistence.

    Value theory 2008

  • Bush said the surplus is the people's money not the government but he turned over a deficit to Obama and a complete mess for him to clean up.

    Cantor gets in quickest response on jobs 2010

  • There is one other general concept used throughout the work which should be defined here – the concept of what I call surplus energy (often shortened to surplus).

    Energy and Society~ Chapter 1~ Energy & Society 2009

  • In the case of labor, price supports are known as a minimum wage, import restrictions are handled by the Immigration Department and the surplus is additional unemployment.

    Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Case Studies on the Minimum Wage 2005

  • Now, this difference between what you get and what he gets is what we call surplus-value.

    Socialism: Positive and Negative Robert Rives La Monte

  • "Having studied the documents and the past recent history of the games bidding process, we have decided that the word 'surplus' clearly represents the financial results from the staging of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games combined," the IOC said.

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed 2011

  • Having studied the documents and the past recent history of the Games bidding process, we have decided that the word 'surplus' clearly represents the financial results from the staging of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games combined.

    BBC News - Home 2011

  • Having studied the documents and the past recent history of the Games bidding process we have decided that the word 'surplus' clearly represents the financial results from the staging of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games combined.

    The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed 2011

  • But that has we see drops in assets across the entire industry taking, what I call the surplus outs.

    SeekingAlpha.com: Home Page 2008

  • The years when the budget was in "surplus" were hardly a time of low interest rates, or declining trade deficits for that matter.

    Economic Attribution Error, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

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