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The BFD Word of the Day

,   and  Peter Andersen
1 min read
word of the day

The word for today is…

futile (adj) – Ineffectual; useless; incapable of producing any result; not successful.

Source : The Free Dictionary

Etymology : Futile broke into 16th-century English as a Latinate borrowing from Middle French. The Latin derivative, f?tilis, was used to describe things that are brittle or fragile and, by extension, things serving no purpose or being pointless. These meanings survive in the English futile, which denotes ineffectiveness or frivolousness. In 1827, English author Robert Southey found use for the word by blending it into utilitarian to form futilitarian, a word that is used for anyone who believes that human striving is futile—that is, ineffective and/or frivolous.

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