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Webster 1913 Edition


Futility

Fu′tilˊi-ty

,
Noun.
[L.
futilitas
: cf. F.
futilité
.]
1.
The quality of being talkative; talkativeness; loquaciousness; loquacity.
[Obs.]
2.
The quality of producing no valuable effect, or of coming to nothing; uselessness.
The
futility
of this mode of philosophizing.
Whewell.

Webster 1828 Edition


Futility

FUTIL'ITY

,
Noun.
Talkativeness; loquaciousness; loquacity. [In this sense, not now used.]
1.
Triflingness; unimportance; want of weight or effect; as, to expose the futility of arguments.
2.
The quality of producing no valuable effect, or of coming to nothing; as the futility of measures or schemes.

Definition 2024


futility

futility

English

Noun

futility (usually uncountable, plural futilities)

  1. (uncountable) The quality of being futile or useless.
    His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility.
  2. (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.
  3. (uncountable) Unimportance.

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