- futile
- futile, vain, fruitless, bootless, abortive all denote barren of result. Futile and vain parallel each other only when they imply failure to realize an immediate aim{
it was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance— Stevenson
}Vain (see also VAIN 1) usually implies little more than simple failure; futile may connote the completeness of the failure or the unwisdom of the undertaking{all literature, art, and science are vain ... if they do not enable you to be glad— Ruskiny
}{Opposition . . . had been so futile that surrender seemed the only course open— Jones
}Though both vain and futile may be applied to something contemplated but not yet tried, vain more often suggests a judgment based on previous experience and futile, one based on reasoning from self-evident principles{but it is vain to talk of form and symmetry to the pure expansionist— Babbitt
}{it is futile to ask which [Shakespeare or Dante] undertook the more difficult job— T. S. Eliot
}Fruitless is often interchangeable with vain. But its basic meaning makes it especially applicable to undertakings that entail long, patient, arduous effort and severe disappointment{whom he had long time sought with fruitless suit— Spenser
}{he nursed a grievance and, with Scotch persistence, kept up for years his fruitless efforts at reinstatement— Ashley
}Bootless, chiefly poetic, is especially applied to petitions or efforts to obtain relief{they would not pity me, yet plead I must; and bootless unto them— Shak.
}{no guides were to be found, and in the next summer the young man returned from his bootless errand— Parkman
}Abortive implies failure before plans are matured or activities begun{an abortive conspiracy
}{an abortive attempt to break jail
}{he had stirred up the Maronites to attack us . . . had I not brought up unexpectedly so many Arabs as rendered the scheme abortive— Scott
}{some of them would play a considerable part in the abortive renaissance of the 1890's— Malcolm Cowley
}Analogous words: *vain, idle, otiose, nugatory: ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
