Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lacking meaning; senseless.
- adj. Ineffectual: pointless attempts to rescue the victims of the raging fire.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having no point; terminating squarely or in a rounded end.
- Without point or force: as, a pointless joke.
- In botany, same as muticous.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having no point or sharp tip; terminating squarely or in a rounded end.
- adj. Having no prominent or important feature, as of an argument, discourse, etc.
- adj. Having no purpose; purposeless; unable to effect an aim.
- adj. mathematics Without points.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having no point; blunt; wanting keenness; obtuse.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being
- adj. not having a point especially a sharp point
Etymologies
- point + -less (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Russia's most famous poet, Alexander Pushkin, coined the phrase "pointless and merciless" which is known to almost all Russians in a description of 18th century peasant revolts.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“When is the alteration of a landmark for a new use so extensive as to render the designation pointless?”
The Huffington Post: Roberta Brandes Gratz: When Is a Landmark A Landmark?
“Russian president Vladimir Putin lashing out at the U.S. for conducting what he calls a pointless war in Iraq.”
“Putin is now urging the U.S. to set a date for withdrawing from what he calls a pointless war in Iraq.”
“Anyone who calls the event "pointless" is myopic at best.”
“#5: Oklahoma would have to take the cake in pointless alcohol regulation”
“Oklahoma would have to take the cake in pointless alcohol regulation, where beer over 3.2% alcohol has to be sold in liquor stores, and kept warm until sold.”
“Avoiding involvement in pointless and counter-productive wars”
“No one wants to spend day after day in pointless meetings, doing performance reviews, approving expense reports, etc.”
“He can't just mope about and claim that Rose and Donna are better off now that he's stranded them in pointless backwaters and get away with my sympathies.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pointless’.
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Linda(G4)
Accurate, address, afford, alert, analyze, ancestor, annual, apparent, arena, arrest, ascend, assist and 126 more...
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Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
LIT - Iliad - key words and protagonists
abduct, abducting, abductor, Achaea, Achaean, Achilles, advise, Aegean, Aegean Sea, Aegina, aegis, Aeneas and 713 more...
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-more or -less
Words ending with *more or *less, more or less. Many of theses terms also appear on the list The -less Said, which see.
schemaless, unless, useless, guileless, wireless, regardless, homeless, endless, nevertheless, countless, jobless, doubtless and 434 more...
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Phrases from British novels, between ...
lust legs and lip..., lawner, clettering, cletter, big business, pointless, feckless, aimless, graceless, something nasty i..., cold comfort, mollock and 61 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 2369 more... -
eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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The -less Said...
hopeless, bootless, groundless, luckless, artless, feckless, hapless, joyless, useless, penniless, childless, peerless and 310 more...
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jmjarmstrong's list
Words that I used to know.
geloscopy, hunker, willy nilly, harum scarum, whacko, meh, nork, misunderestimate, atrabiliousness, luftmensch, auxanometer, hyperhedonia and 1948 more...
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uh huh, her
Some words myself (or others) might use to describe me
paradoxical, indecisive, existential, accurate, unorthodox, european, holistic, sincere, stoical, remorseful, opinionated, apathetic and 28 more...
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Mogeltron
Miscellaneous idiolect that could be used to assemble a Whichbe simulator.
point of skew, character as fate, doubt for doubt, story of my life, cumulative effect, default settings, reasonable, or tr..., take care, relative proportion, is that so, cognitive bias, and whatnot and 41 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pointless.
jmjarmstrong JM reckons that life would be pointless without geometry Jul 3, 2011
BrainyBabe One of the cows kept at ''Cold Comfort Farm'', the classic satire by Stella Gibbons. Big Business, the bull, services her and her companions Graceless, Aimless, and Feckless. Dec 22, 2008