futile

adjective

1. 1

   Incapable of producing results, useless; doomed not to be successful; not worth attempting.

   But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy’s neglect was more than ordinarily evident.

   He seemed hitherto to have been living by proxy, in a vision, in reflection—to have been an echo, a shadow, a futile attempt;[…]

   No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or[…]. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

   There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.[…]Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors. Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place.

2. 2

   Insignificant; frivolous.

   Of its history little is recorded, and that little futile.

   This idiosyncrasy is brought out by social pressure, while in a state of nature it might have betrayed itself only in trivial and futile ways, as it does among barbarians.

Forms

comparative

more futile

superlative

most futile