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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bootless

Bootless \Boot"less\, a. [From Boot profit.] Unavailing; unprofitable; useless; without advantage or success.
--Chaucer.

I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers.
--Shak. [1913 Webster] -- Boot"less*ly, adv. -- Boot"less*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
bootless

late Old English botleas "unpardonable, not to be atoned for, without help or remedy," from boot (n.2) + -less. Meaning "useless, unprofitable" is from early 15c.

bootless

"lacking boots," late 14c., from boot (n.1) + -less.

Wiktionary
bootless

Etymology 1 a. without boots Etymology 2

a. profitless; pointless; unavailing

WordNet
bootless

adj. unproductive of success; "a fruitless search"; "futile years after her artistic peak"; "a sleeveless errand"; "a vain attempt" [syn: fruitless, futile, sleeveless, vain]

Usage examples of "bootless".

And what would their parents think of me, if they saw or heard the children rioting, hatless, bonnetless, gloveless, and bootless, in the deep soft snow?

But once he picked out the clenched fist of Woitape, he could count forward and back down the range: Taurika, Bootless Lowa and Boroko, curving to the northwest, Kaivuna and Samson Kokoda commanding the plain to the south.

He even glanced briefly down at the eastern slope of Bootless Lowa Mountain before cutting his eyes away.

She heard the thump of his bootless feet on the wood of the floor above, and shook her head to clear her thoughts.

Paganel asked Glenarvan, however, to let him have the document again, on the faith of which they had set out on so bootless a search.

Surrey later, when the hall was filled with the smell of roasting venison and they were sitting bootless, warm before the fire.

More than once, he had made Bannor bear the brunt of his own bootless outrage.

Had he half the luck of those ill-begotten heroes of the thrice-accursed sagas, the creature would make bootless search of the hill while he completed his own quest.

So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from her American possessions--a bootless task, for the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled forever.

When he realizes just how deep over his head he is intellectually, he turns off his computer and goes to bed and sleeps the bootless sleep of the depressed for ten hours.