otiose

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"Half the streets are cobbled and half wide, empty, modern highways at whose pretentious crossings an occasional rickshaw waits for the otiose traffic lights to change to green."

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Lazy; indolent.
  2. adjective Of no use.
  3. adjective Ineffective; futile. See Synonyms at vain.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

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Examples (50)

  • What a lengthy article which shows only that comparisons such are these are both odious and, like this article, otiose. —  House Price Crash News Blog
  • The bishop said the consequences were 'the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together, the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose, the abuse of substances (including alcohol), the loss of respect for the person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks, the increasing communications gap between generations and social classes - the list is very long.' —  VDARE.com: Blog Articles
  • Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. —  The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
  • We have to seek the explanation of the phenomenon in the fact that not only has the Shepherd's Calender behind it a vast tradition, reverend if somewhat otiose--the devotion of men counts for something--but also that, however stiffly laced in an unsuitable garb, it sought to deal with matters of real import to man, or at any rate with what man has held as such. —  Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England
  • Read for centuries in an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superstitious manner, they have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire systems of interpretation--which were believed in for generations and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. —  God and my Neighbour
 

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin ōtiōsus, idle, from ōtium, leisure.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = Old French ocios, ocieus, otiens = Spanish Portuguese ocioso = Italian ozioso, from Latin otiosus, having leisure or ease, at leisure, from otium, leisure, ease; prob. not related to ease: see ease. Cf. negotiate, etc.
 

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/ˈoʊʃɪoʊs/
by American Heritage

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