| 释义 |
redundancy|rɪˈdʌndənsɪ|
[See prec. and -ancy.]
1. a. The state or quality of being redundant; superabundance, superfluity. Also with a and pl., an instance or case of this.
1601–2W. Fulbecke 1st Pt. Parall. 74 There is in them me thinketh great redundancie of wordes, which might wel be spared. 1678Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. iv. §20. 375 A Love of Redundancy and Overflowing Fulness, delighting to communicate it self. 1706Walsh Let. to Pope 20 July, The redundancy of Wit..is not what ever pleases the best judges. 1765Museum Rust. IV. 14 Such trees as run into wood, whose redundancy must be moderated before they will throw out any bearing branches. 1821Byron Juan iv. cxvii, I'm sensible redundancy is wrong, But could not for the muse of me put less in't. 1875Helps Soc. Press. xiv. 207, I can perceive defects and redundancies in his way of treating them.
b. A redundant thing or part.
1631Gouge God's Arrows iii. §9. 201 This particle (us) is an usuall redundancy in the Hebrew tongue. 1651N. Bacon Disc. Govt. Eng. ii. xxvi. (1739) 114 As touching the Pontifical Benediction, himself took that but as a redundancy. 1770Foote Lame Lover i. Wks. 1799 II. 61 A leg! a redundancy! a mere nothing at all. 1816T. L. Peacock Headlong Hall vii, The remaining one wallows in all the redundancies of luxury. 1875Gladstone Glean. VI. xxxii. 160 There is no redundancy that can be safely parted with.
c. That which is redundant; the surplus.
1733Cheyne Eng. Malady ii. vii. §2 (1734) 186 That Function..throwing off the Redundancy and Feculence. 1795J. Sullivan Hist. Maine 35 Here a fall of water..empties the redundancy of Damariscota Ponds into the channel. 1832H. Martineau Homes Abroad ii. 25 It is not the whole of the people... It is only the redundancy that we have to take care of.
2. spec.
a. Engin. The presence in a framework of more members than are needed to confer rigidity.
1904J. B. Johnson et al. Theory & Pract. Mod. Framed Structures (ed. 8) I. xxv. 260 Another common example of redundancy is where two diagonals are used in the same quadrilateral. 1923W. L. Marsh Internat. Air Congr., London, 1923 828 Owing to the extreme redundancy of the structure [of the airship] the calculations cannot be tackled by the graphical methods employed on most types of girder work construction. 1950J. C. Grassie Elem. Theory Structures ix. 129 (heading) Conditions for internal and external redundancy in structures. 1966J. L. Meriam Statics iii. 81 For a truss that is statically determinate externally, there is a definite relation between the number of its members and the number of its joints necessary for internal stability without redundancy.
b. The condition of having more staff in an organization than is necessary. Hence, the state or fact of losing a job because there is no further work to be done; a case of unemployment due to reorganization, mechanization, loss of orders, etc.
1931Economist 11 Apr. 780/1 Such economics create redundancy of staff and unemployment rather than increased employment. 1934Planning II. xxvi. 3 The shipbuilding and wool textiles industries have succeeded in establishing common instruments with which to combat redundancy. 1952Economist 12 July 77 The strike against redundancy is a comparatively new phenomenon in industrial relations. 1955Times 31 Aug. 4/6 The men stopped work after a dispute..over the way to handle redundancy at the works because of a reorganization scheme. 1956Economist 7 July 12/2 The unions now appear ready to lay rather more emphasis on bargaining for higher severance pay, and rather less on demonstrations against the fact of redundancies. 1957Observer 8 Sept. 9/4 This [sc. Gloucester] is a rather troubled city, with 15,000 people—nearly a third of the insured population—in the aircraft industry, and the prospect of substantial redundancy as defence contracts run out. 1972Accountant 5 Oct. 420/1 Should a staff surveyor become redundant, redundancy pay would be considered, the maximum benefit being limited to one month's pay (based on salary at the date of redundancy) for every completed year's service. 1976J. R. L. Anderson Redundancy Pay i. 11 The terms of the final merger called for heavy redundancies. 1977M. Drabble Ice Age ii. 240 There isn't any work. There's large-scale unemployment. Redundancies everywhere. 1977I. Shaw Beggarman, Thief iii. vi. 267 We live in the age of what the British call redundancy.
c. Linguistics. The element or degree of predictability in a language arising from knowledge of its structure; the fact of superfluity of information in a piece of language.
1948Bell Syst. Techn. Jrnl. XXVII. 398 The redundancy of ordinary English, not considering statistical structure over greater distances than about eight letters, is roughly 50%. 1954G. A. Miller et al. in J. S. Bruner Beyond Information Given (1974) iii. 59 When missing or ambiguous portions of a stimulus pattern can be supplied correctly..on the basis of the context alone, the missing portions carry little or no information. This fact is referred to as the redundancy of the language. 1972J. L. Dillard Black English vii. 283 What the linguist calls redundancy—a technical term..which explains how we are able to understand sentences which we have not heard plainly or to read paragraphs in which a great deal of the print has been scrambled. 1977A. Sheridan tr. J. Lacan's Écrits iii. 86 This notion of redundancy in language originated in research that was all the more precise because a vested interest was involved. 1979E. H. Gombrich Sense of Order iv. 104 It is easy to understand how our grasp of ordinary language profits from high redundancies. We can afford to miss or mishear individual sounds or even words without losing the meaning.
d. Engin. The incorporation of extra parts in the design of a mechanical or electronic system in such a way that its function is not impaired in the event of a failure.
1962J. Glenn in Into Orbit 38 The engineers had a word for this insistence on inserting backups into the system. They called it the principle of ‘redundancy’. 1972L. M. Harris Introd. Deepwater Floating Drilling Operations viii. 84 Redundancy implies that alternate methods of well control and operating subsea equipment will be available in the event of failure of any one component or group of components. 1972Sci. Amer. Jan. 46/2 Perhaps the most unusual feature of the grand-tour spacecraft will be a computer called star (‘self-test and repair’), provided with enough redundancy to operate for at least 10 years.
3. attrib. and Comb., as (sense 2 b) redundancy agreement, redundancy pay, redundancy payment, redundancy scheme; (sense 2 c) redundancy rule; redundancy check Computers, a check on the correctness of processed data that involves a comparison with accompanying data derived from them prior to processing.
1951Public Administration XXIX. 374/1 Examples, in the years between the two wars, of competitive industries being turned into monopolies, sometimes with the help of the State—the agricultural schemes, or the redundancy agreements, as in tinplate and shipbuilding. 1969Guardian 3 July 12/1 The dockers and the port employers should start thinking about the sort of redundancy agreement that would meet their needs.
1962Gloss. Terms Automatic Data Processing (B.S.I.) 33 Redundancy check, redundant check, a check that uses extra digits, which do not themselves fully represent the data concerned. 1970O. Dopping Computers & Data Processing ii. 49 The most common form of redundancy check is the parity check.
1969Times 7 Nov. 21/7 (heading) Redundancy pay. 1976J. R. L. Anderson Redundancy Pay i. 11 The terms of the final merger called for heavy redundancies... There would be a bit of redundancy pay. 1980Times Lit. Suppl. 31 Oct. 1240/4 Gus Baedecker, the London adman of Events Beyond the Heartlands, who uses his redundancy pay to take Kate and the children away from it all to a cottage on the Welsh coast.
1965Act 13 & 14 Eliz. II c. 62 §1 Where on or after the appointed day an employee who has been continuously employed for the requisite period—..is dismissed by his employer by reason of redundancy,..then,..the employer shall be liable to pay to him a sum (in this Act referred to as a ‘redundancy payment’). 1966Listener 17 Mar. 391/2 We carried out too, our pledge to introduce redundancy payments for those who were temporarily out of a job through the speeding of the process of industrial change. 1972M. Jones Life on Dole ii. i. 98 The Redundancy Payments Act of 1965..compels the employer to pay out a lump sum..to each employee who is dismissed.
1965N. Chomsky Aspects of Theory of Syntax 214 More generally the phonological redundancy rules, which determine such features as voicing of vowels.., can be supplemented by analogous syntactic and semantic redundancy rules. 1972Archivum Linguisticum III. 14 A morphological feature..must be recognized as being syntactically relevant, by means of a lexical redundancy rule. 1976Language LII. 296 Lexical redundancy rules define the set of possible underlying morphemes in a language, in addition to minimizing the feature specifications required in the lexicon.
1969Guardian 3 July 12/2 A generous redundancy scheme for dockers could save money. |