赘 (zhuì): superfluous

Meanings

1 superfluous
2 redundant
3 excessive
4 unnecessary

Characters

赘

zhuì

superfluous; redundant; to move in with wife's family

Examples

HSK 2

不要说赘话，直接说重点。

Búyào shuō zhuì huà, zhíjiē shuō zhòngdiǎn.

Don't say unnecessary things; just get to the point.

HSK 7-9

文章里有些赘语，需要删减。

Wénzhāng lǐ yǒuxiē zhuì yǔ, xūyào shānjiǎn.

There are some superfluous words in the article that need to be cut.

Tips

register

赘 is a classical/literary bound form, mostly appearing in compound words: 赘语 (superfluous words), 赘言 (unnecessary remarks), 累赘 (cumbersome/burdensome). It rarely appears alone in everyday speech.

Components

radical

贝 bèi

cowrie; money

Bottom cowrie/money radical - the indexing radical. Anchors 赘 in the wealth/exchange family with 贵 expensive, 财 wealth, 赔 to pay, 贷 to lend. Cowrie shells served as Bronze Age currency; the radical marks 赘 in its original sense of pawning or pledging valuables to secure a loan.

phonetic

敖 áo

to roam; arrogant

Top 敖 supplies the sound, drifting from áo to zhuì in an older phonetic pairing now obscured by sound change. The 'roaming, idle' sense lends a faint semantic flavour fitting one meaning of 赘: a superfluous addition, something extraneous hanging on uselessly. Same phonetic shows up in 熬 to stew and 傲 proud.