useless

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It was useless--useless to try to put it from me--this idea so wretchedly bizarre, so grotesque and fantastic, so utterly inane--it was useless to deny that the cat bore a distinct resemblance to my great-aunt I gazed at her in horror.

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Definitions (6)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Being or having no beneficial use; futile or ineffective.
  2. adjective Incapable of functioning or assisting; ineffectual: He panics easily and is useless in an emergency. See Synonyms at futile.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

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

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Examples (50)

  • If the warning were useless, as she fully expected, she would at least have done what she could. —  The Chinese Shawl - Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver 05
  • "Well. I'm glad you decided not to bother appealing the resolution; with a seven-to-three margin it would've been useless, anyway." —  Spinneret
  • A novelist carries with him constantly what most women carry in large purses: much that is useless, a few absolutely essential items, and then, for good measure, a great number of things that fall in between. —  Omni: March 1995
  • This would probably terminate in rendering the State governments useless, and would destroy the system so recently established. —  Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2
  • Guns were useless, and I doubted explosives -- the sword! —  F ;SF; - vol 101 issue 02 - August 2001
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

foolish ·  unnecessary ·  dangerous ·  mere ·  worthless ·  futile ·  miserable
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.
 

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/ˈjuslɛs/
by American Heritage

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