Edward Zwick

I'm always interested in the ways in which a character can inhabit either a theme or a premise personally, so that those scenes that are about his character or his relationship with other characters feel in context and don't seem to be apart from or oddly vestigial to the actual drama.

American Director

Rob Sheffield

But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.

American Journalist

P. J. O'Rourke

Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that's when the kids are home from school, although having the kids home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past.

American Comedian

Don Winslow

The novelist is the vestigial bone on the body cinema. We're like the little toe that can be cut off.

American Author

Vestigial often implies something was bigger or more important in the past.

Size Implication

Used in biology to describe parts that have declined in size and function.

Evolutionary Trace

Although usually non-functional, vestigial items can sometimes have new uses.

Not Always Useless

Often refers to once-necessary features made obsolete by technological advances.

Modern Redundancy

Understanding historical context helps grasp why something is now vestigial.

Cultural Awareness

Vestigial structures tell a story of an organism's evolutionary adaptations.

Anatomical History

Just because a part is vestigial, it doesn't mean it's always nonfunctional.

Potential Misunderstanding

A common misconception is that all vestigial organs are entirely useless.

Misconception Alert

 Do such structures serve some hidden function that hasn't yet been discovered? Or are they relics of our evolutionary past, having once served some important purpose only to persist into the present as vestigial remnants? One idea is that hiccups began

Why do we hiccup? - John...

 not beautifully, but it would work. You'd make money, you'd lose money, you'd make money. But this is a year's worth of days, and you'd make a little money during that period. It's a very vestigial system.