Crossword clues for uselessness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Useless \Use"less\, a. Having, or being of, no use; unserviceable; producing no good end; answering no valuable purpose; not advancing the end proposed; unprofitable; ineffectual; as, a useless garment; useless pity.
Not to sit idle with so great a gift
Useless, and thence ridiculous.
--Milton.
Syn: Fruitless; ineffectual.
Usage: Useless, Fruitless, Ineffectual. We speak of an attempt, effort, etc., as being useless when there are in it inherent difficulties which forbid the hope of success, as fruitless when it fails, not from any such difficulties, but from some unexpected hindrance arising to frustrate it; as, the design was rendered fruitless by the death of its projector. Ineffectual nearly resembles fruitless, but implies a failure of a less hopeless character; as, after several ineffectual efforts, I at last succeeded.
Useless are all words
Till you have writ ``performance'' with your
swords.
The other is for waiving.
--Beau. & Fl.
Waiving all searches into antiquity, in relation
to this controversy, as being either needless or
fruitless.
--Waterland.
Even our blessed Savior's preaching, who spake
as never man spake, was ineffectual to many.
--Bp.
Stillingfleet.
[1913 Webster] -- Use"less*ly, adv. --
Use"less*ness, n.
Wiktionary
n. the quality of being useless
WordNet
n. the quality of having no practical use [syn: inutility, unusefulness] [ant: utility, utility]
Usage examples of "uselessness".
Realizing the uselessness of protest, Dan stood by while Sooey Wan manufactured the heart-warmer.
Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social.
He followed her into a room furnished in the Victorian manner with a bright carpet, plush curtains, a handsome solid couch and chairs, a fixture once devoted to gas but now converted to electricity in the middle of the ceiling, and a great variety of enlarged photographs, photogravures and china ornaments which combined uselessness and ugliness to a remarkable degree.
His legs were numbed to uselessness, Celine was sitting on the bottom boards in swirling, slopping water, incapable, and Kershaw never moved.
The defenselessness and uselessness sensations had tortured it during as much time that now felt an enormous lightening.
Of the absolute uselessness of the vast majority of these experiments much might be said, but it is aside from this inquiry.
But this uselessness is not altogether absolute, it relates only to those subjects which depend on a knowledge of minute details, or on those things in which the method of conducting war has changed.
In any case, it did light our way, vaguely, it is true, but I soon accustomed myself to the peculiar darkness, and I understood, under such circumstances, the uselessness of the Ruhmkorff apparatus.
His feet were chafed raw and blistered in the boots, the borrowed socks soaked to uselessness with sweat and serosanguinous fluid.
It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.
Lord Roberts had issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in which he pointed out the uselessness of further resistance, declared that guerilla warfare would be ruthlessly suppressed, and informed the burghers that no fewer than fifteen thousand of their fellow-countrymen were in his hands as prisoners, and that none of these could he released until the last rifle had been laid down.
I will here only add that their variability seems to be owing to their uselessness, and therefore to natural selection having no power to check deviations in their structure.
He reexperienced his gambling mania and his feelings of uselessness after retiring, but this soon passed because it was the 1940s and he was running the bar and grill again.
The complete immobility which paralyzed all my limbs seemed to me a proof of the uselessness of my repentance, and that conviction only increased my consternation.
But then the uselessness of his passion rebounded against him, and he was forced to recite to himself as if he were reading the catechism of his illness, Futility is the defining characteristic of life.