residual

US/ɹɪˈzɪd͡ʒ.u.əl/

adjectiveC2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,540 of 15,258leans written

Residual means left over after the main part has gone. Residual heat, residual pain, residual value.

In finance the residual value is what an asset is worth at the end of a lease, and getting it wrong is what has ruined several leasing companies. Residual income for a performer is a repeat payment, and in ordinary use it just means what remains.

Definitions of residual

1adjectiveresidualLeft over after the main part has gone.C2
“Months after the flood, there was still some residual damp in the walls.”

residual is a quality.

Remember it

reSIDual → what SITs at the bottom

From the Latin for sitting back: after everything else has gone, what is left just sits there at the bottom, still sitting when the rest has been taken away.

hooks ontosit

Where it comes from

From residue, from Latin residuum, what is left over, from residere, to remain behind.

Latin
residuum — a remainder
Old French
residu
English, today
residual

Built from

residuus · Latin — remaining, left over
resideō · Latin — to remain behind
re- · Latin — back, again
sedeō · Latin — to sit, to reside

Recorded since 1570. From residue, itself borrowed during the Middle English period from Old French residu (Modern French résidu), from Latin residuum (“a remainder”), the neuter inflection of residuus (“remaining, left over”), perfect participle of resideō (“to remain behind”), from re- (“back, again”) + sedeō (“to sit, to reside”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

residual in the wild

The residual is the difference between the observed value and the estimated value of the quantity of interest (for example, a sample mean).
Errors and residuals
In materials science and solid mechanics, residual stresses are stresses that remain in a solid material after the original cause of the stresses has been removed.
Residual stress
When the finished weldment cools, some areas cool and contract more than others, leaving residual stresses.
Residual stress
The total number of spoilt votes in a United States election has been called the residual vote.
Spoilt vote
Functional residual capacity (FRC) is the volume of air present in the lungs at the end of passive expiration.
Functional residual capacity

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the sedeō family

president

residual — used about once every 2,648 pages · #7,540 · point at the bar for the others

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