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Webster 1913 Edition

Noun.

[L.

futilitas

: cf. F.

futilité

The quality of being talkative; talkativeness; loquaciousness; loquacity.

[Obs.]

The quality of producing no valuable effect, or of coming to nothing; uselessness.

The

futility

of this mode of philosophizing.

Whewell.

Noun.

Talkativeness; loquaciousness; loquacity. [In this sense, not now used.]

Triflingness; unimportance; want of weight or effect; as, to expose the futility of arguments.

The quality of producing no valuable effect, or of coming to nothing; as the futility of measures or schemes.

futility ‎(usually uncountable, plural futilities)

(uncountable) The quality of being futile or useless.
His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility.
(countable) Something, especially an act, that is futile.
- 1803, Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson:
  But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him, his sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities, and what remains?
- 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 3, chapter XIII, Democracy
  No man oppresses thee, can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shewn. […] No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go: but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false appetites for Money, Windsor Georges and such like?
- 1919, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise:
  But men will chatter and you and I will still shout our futilities to each other across the stage until the last silly curtain falls plump! upon our bobbing heads.
- 2009 September 5, Robert Clark, “Exhibition preview: Goya: Fantasies, Follies And Disasters, Manchester”, in Guardian:
  There are moments of profound existential angst, howls of despair at the absurd futilities of war and a sneering disgust at the soul-destroying wastage of human potential.
(uncountable) Unimportance.

quality of being futile