Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lacking in utility or serviceability; not useful.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Unprofitable; useless.
- n. A useless thing.
Wiktionary
- adj. obsolete useless; unprofitable
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Useless; unprofitable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. not worth using
Etymologies
- Latin inutilis: compare French inutile. See in- not, utile. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin inūtilis : in-, not; see in-1 + ūtilis, useful; see utile. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“At City Hall, Mayor Tomas Osmeña fumed over the incident, saying the LTO and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) are "inutile" for failing to take away the franchise of participating drivers and operators.”
Sun.Star Network Online - Your Source of Philippine Community News
“inutile' and 'prostituted' with Merceditas Gutierrez at its helm, insisting she should be impeached.”
WN.com - Articles related to Brandy anger forces Bulgaria to scrap tax increase
“Consumerism creates trash, lots of it and very quickly, and also inevitably bad art, and crafts formerly useful things made inutile and unaffordable by their presumption to be beautiful.”
“Beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a slow suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm, peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional dove-grey cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist.”
“However, it becomes complicated and inutile when someone dictates upon the mind of any citizen journalist who has his own sphere of influence in carrying out his passion for blogging, by telling him what to do, even if what he wrote was an opinion piece.”
“In the meantime, the inutile Philippine labor and embassy officials in Saudi Arabia are more than reluctant to help their own fellow countrymen.”
“Otherwise, this undertaking will be another inutile project in the making because China has other agenda in mind.”
“How could the military regime so inutile to think of. a positive way to just accept the offers of foreign governments.”
“Otherwise, it would again be an inutile acquisition and a waste of public funds.”
“I myself can attest to the inutile of the people in government especially those stationed in Philippine embassies and labor offices in foreign lands.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘inutile’.
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Words in which "u" is pronounced "yu"
cute, uniform, puny, municipal, butte, fume, perfume, puke, cucumber, huge, demure, cube and 95 more...
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Valuseless
Of low worth or little importance.
Unwanted matter by drusky is a nice, related list.trivial, cheap, inutile, ineffectual, dross, floccinaucinihili..., gimcrack, frippery, invalidated, drivel, otiose, tripe and 91 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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Words I Love But Don't Use Enough
Thanks to all you Wordies out there flinging new words at my head. This one's for you.
phascolomian, flammulated, pelagic, avuncular, spondulicks, frippery, wyvern, stramash, cack-handed, bellicosity, infrared reflecto..., contumeliously and 106 more...
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the catch-all
inveigle, frontier, invective, quizzical, merit, proficiency, eleemosynary, ham-handed, circumspect, epergne, cobble, industriousness and 201 more...
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Lolita
Words to remember from Nabokov's "Lolita"
concordance, limned, lurid, puerility, variorum, perspicacious, exigency, acrostic, solipsism, mnemosyne, involution, fatidic and 227 more...
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Lolita
Words compiled while reading Lolita
lolita, solecism, cognomen, etiolate, tendresse, expiatory, filch, paroxysm, arabesques, sibilant, manque, uranist and 181 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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The Pleonastic Athenaeum of Counter-D...
fuligin, ineffable, atramentous, atrament, oneiromancy, thaumaturgy, lachrymose, athenaeum, daedal, mammothrept, anaimosarke, psilanthropy and 38 more...
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Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace muthafucka
prandial, fantod, fenestrate, eschatology, lacuna, chintz, samizdat, fiat, polyesterishly, etiology, prolix, atrophy and 32 more...
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stumblepeach - words
miasma, neologism, snuggery, hickory, frieze, slant, conspicuous, trullo, wikiality, truthiness, sequitur, monolith and 34 more...
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John Banville And His Quest To Frustr...
'Oh yeah. My books must be an absolute nightmare to translate.' - Banville
'Brandishing Roget's apotropaic caduceus, Banville's prose is flocculent and positively crepitant with memory's...flocculent, cinereal, crepitant, velutinous, paean, inutile, ovine, cracaleured, ichor
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Worthless or Useless
Words meaning worthless or useless.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for inutile.
milosrdenstvi Composing scales beside the rails
That flanked a field of corn,
A farmer’s boy with vicious joy
Performed upon a horn:
The vagrant airs, the fragrant airs
Around that field that strayed,
Took flight before the flagrant airs
That noisome urchin played.
He played with care “The Maiden’s Prayer;�?
He played “God Save the Queen,�?
“Die Wacht am Rhein,�? and “Auld Lang Syne,�?
And “Wearing of the Green:�?
With futile toots, and brutal toots,
And shrill chromatic scales,
And utterly inutile toots,
And agonizing wails.
The while he played, around him strayed,
And calmly chewed the cud,
Some thirty-nine assorted kine,
All ankle-deep in mud:
They stamped about and tramped about
That mud, till all the troupe
Made noises, as they ramped about,
Like school-boys eating soup.
Till, growing bored, with one accord
They broke the fence forlorn:
The field was doomed. The cows consumed
Two-thirds of all the corn,
And viciously, maliciously,
Went prancing o’er the loam.
That landscape expeditiously
Resembled harvest-home.
“Most idle ass of all your class,�?
The farmer said with scorn:
“Just see my son, what you have done!
The cows are in the corn!�?
“Oh, drat,�? he said, “the brat!�? he said.
The cowherd seemed to rouse.
“My friend, it’s worse than that,�? he said.
“The corn is in the cows.�?
The moral lies before our eyes.
When tending kine and corn,
Don’t spend your noons in tooting tunes
Upon a blatant horn:
Or scaling, and assailing, and
With energy immense,
Your cows will take a railing, and
The farmer take offense.
- "The Harmonious Heedlessness of Little Boy Blue", by Guy Wetmore Carryl May 22, 2009
rolig The noun this forms – inutility – is quite evocative, to me at least. Sep 26, 2008
zuccaciyecioglu This is the name of a song in the musical "In the Heights." Sep 26, 2008
cathari I'd never thought about that until you told me, but yes. I'm sure knowing a smattering of Japanese is not helping in this regard. Oct 31, 2007
tellurian I know what it means, but this word remainds me of Inuits. And dogs. It's quite an elegant word, oddly, until you deconstruct it, and then it suddenly starts sounding less impressive.... Oct 31, 2007