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

文章里有些赘语，需要删减。

Wénzhāng lǐ yǒuxiē zhuì yǔ, xūyào shān jiǎn.

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

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.

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 (radical)

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 (here phonetic)

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.