Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having no useful result; ineffectual.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Frivolous; merely loquacious.
- Of no effect; answering no valuable purpose; useless; ineffective; trifling: as, futile efforts; futile prattle.
- Synonyms Trivial, frivolous, unimportant, useless, bootless, unavailing, profitless, vain, idle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Talkative; loquacious; tattling.
- adjective Of no importance; answering no useful end; useless; vain; worthless.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Incapable of producing results;
useless ; not successful; not worth attempting.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective producing no result or effect
- adjective unproductive of success
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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It will cost millions in marketing and promotion, or what I call a futile attempt and waste of shareholder equity.
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Cape Town after the union staged a go-slow following what it termed futile wage negotiations.
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Based on this dubious proposition, the researchers bizarrely advocate what they call "futile busyness, namely, busyness serving no purpose other than to prevent idleness."
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TEHRAN (Reuters) - The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi says her 62-year-old brother was among those detained after last month's disputed election in what she called a futile attempt to ...
WN.com - Articles related to Hollyweird - Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg
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I think the ultimate in futile laws – at least from its title – was the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978.
Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Congressional Democrats Already Preparing to Lose Control of Congress
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Sincere apologies for any lost time spent middle-clicking a taskbar button in futile window-killing attempts.
Middle-Click To Close Applications From Windows 7′s Taskbar | Lifehacker Australia
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Instead, almost a year has been wasted in futile attempts to appease the Republicans and the Mass. disaster has struck.
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How futile is it to bash one party with the other?
Matthew Yglesias » Steve Austria (R-OH) Doesn’t Know When the Depression Happened
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Whether this makes one's dependence on translation for access to so many important writers seem less, or more, futile is a hard question to answer.
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Saying that an ordinary death in combat was futile is hard enough, without being associated with others who call it criminal or dishonorable.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Washington Post Editorializes in Praise of Harold Koh’s Drone Statement
pqnga commented on the word futile
Trivial, useless, fruitless
Comparison is futile.
In a world where comparisons happen non-stop, it is difficult to look outside
yourself and to ever be content with who you are. There's always someone who's a
tad bit better.
Source: for Make It Happen
March 22, 2011
bilby commented on the word futile
Confucious say, futile not enough to fix roof.
March 22, 2011