Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

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. — 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.

— Use′less·ly, adv. — Use′less·ness, n.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.