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useless

[yoos-lis]

Example Sentences

adjective

of no use; not serving the purpose or any purpose; unavailing or futile: It is useless to reason with him.

without useful qualities; of no practical good: a useless person; a useless gadget.

Origin:
1585–95; use + -less

Related forms

use·less·ly, adverb

use·less·ness, noun

Synonyms
1. fruitless, profitless, valueless, worthless, inutile. Useless, futile, ineffectual, vain refer to that which is unavailing. That is useless which is unavailing because of the circumstances of the case or some inherent defect: It is useless to cry over spilt milk. Futile suggests wasted effort and complete failure to attain a desired end: All attempts were futile. That which is ineffectual weakly applies energy in an ill-advised way and does not produce a desired effect: an ineffectual effort. That which is vain is fruitless or hopeless even after all possible effort: It is vain to keep on hoping. 2. unserviceable, unusable.

Antonyms
1. effective.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Useless is always a great word to know.

So is bezoar. Does it mean:

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.

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Example Sentences

Every aid worker has a favorite story about useless donations.

It's pretty much useless to have a degree from a college that has closed.

The skimmers were rendered useless and the workers had to be evacuated.

EXPAND

Every aid worker has a favorite story about useless donations.

It's pretty much useless to have a degree from a college that has closed.

The skimmers were rendered useless and the workers had to be evacuated.

The tracheal mites also impede the bees' ability to fly, making them useless as pollinators, entomologists report.

No matter how fancy mobile gadgets get, they're useless when their batteries run out.

They wrap up a useless gift, such as an inedible plant seed or the empty exoskeleton left after he's eaten a fly.

It confounded my senses and rendered them nearly useless.

The console's default controller is absolutely infuriatingly useless for this game.

It's especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise.

The ones with phenylephrine are absolutely bloody useless.

Yet the report shows how poor countries' governments often tie their own people down in a thicket of useless regulation.

Beauty's current stump is useless for hunting food, so a biologist has been hand-feeding the bird with forceps.

Heavier fractions contain more sulfur, and too much renders the petroleum useless.

They had no need of something as utterly useless to them as the wheel.

I've been kicked too many times by cows wearing this useless contraption.

Everyone needs a budget for useless pseudoscientific pap.

The ministerial organ declares that negotiations for peace on the part of nentrals is use useless.

Do something you enjoy away from this computer and especially away from this increasingly useless forum.

Until recently, inconsistencies in recording crime over time and across police forces would have made such figures useless.

But shredding these instructions renders them useless.

Why not use the brains of child rapists without anesthesia, or other useless animals.

It may be that the code was not a message but a key in which case it is useless without the cyphertext.

It'll fry pace makers, destroy iPhones, and turn laptops into useless paperweights.

Plus, those stupid pens become useless after five minutes with their caps off.

If they really wanted to find bombs, they'd use dogs instead of the overpriced useless machines.

Fences and other deterrents are often useless against hungry herds.

He asked his disciple to go the forest and bring a useless plant.

Strong multipath components can render the primary signal useless.

The survey is not only all of the above, it is darn near useless except to gather potential iinterview participants.

But some experts worry that global warming may render it useless.

Lights were useless because they reflected directly back into the diver's eyes.

Gossiping should be treated as our appendix is attached to our bowels useless but needed for survival.

The world is noisy enough without adding completely useless aural pollution to the mix.

The one you've self published is useless to you as far as your academic career is concerned.

Some adaptations, on the other hand, become useless.

Methane measurements are useless since methane cannot alter climate.

By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades.

And while it might work for techno-geeks who write code, it's utterly useless for many of us in academia.

What a useless and corrupt organization run by a bunch of beurocrats with personal agendas.

Without it machine-guns would be useless because of the smoke.

Some are multifunctional, others are utterly useless.

Writing group is useless if the readers do not give the circulated work the attention it deserves.

But the tongue may be useless against another form of pollution-contaminated water.

These being out of commission, the costly guns become as useless as so much junk.

And yet, each is different in its own special, useless way.

My advice to you when you contemplate offering useless advice: you're not worth the bother.

Although their large wings are useless for flight, they are used for balance and for changing direction as the bird runs.

Another useless experiment tormenting rats aimed at development of yet another pharmaceutical.

All they do is give a zillion useless tests all the time, but never really.

People should not be led on to spend years working on a dissertation only to fail at the end or to get a useless degree.

The small limbs' orientation may have made them useless for snatching prey or digging burrows.

It is useless to complain about the media, when the problem was caused by the science bureaucracy and scientists.

Then again, he is as stubbly and scruffy as his son, so a razor would be as useless as buying shampoo for a bald man.

There have been several threads on this, but the search function is useless.

With no frame of reference our topographic maps are useless.

Mean-variance is the average of all historical data and is useless in my book.

Brand new angles of attack render those defenses useless.

Useless expenditures of collosal size are hidden in the military industrial complex.

Magnification tools are useless and have to be activated over and over again for each page.

Reciting the digits of a transcendental number is utterley useless.

All that speed is useless if you can”t see what you're hunting, so the vessels feature infrared cameras.

And yeah, comparing college athletes to pros is a completely useless comparison, for any number of reasons.

Too much of our energy and resources being wasted on some useless junk and new gadgets instead of going forward to stars.

To lump all complementary cancer treatments into the same category and pronounce them useless is simple-minded.

All the bells and whistles in the world are useless if you don't have a roadmap for your meeting.

The pace of advancement is so fast, that is, that today's devices may appear primitive if not useless a few years hence.

I've tried having him sit, but he's so out of control the basic commands are useless.

Storing hydrogen during production and burning it during down time is useless.

All online sources are actually useless in this situation.

If a mess has been made, it is useless to punish him.

Comments are useless if you truncate the conclusions.

Do away with useless subsidies to corn growers for the biofuels industry and level the playing field.

Ben you seem to complicate lives with useless harmful head games.

Traffic signals and road construction will be useless.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

useless (ˈjuːslɪs)

—*adj*
1.	having no practical use or advantage
2.	informal ineffectual, weak, or stupid: he's useless at history

'uselessly

—*adv*

'uselessness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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