FRUITLESS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Fruitless

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/frˈutləs/ Listen

adjective

Fruitless adj.

Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.

Productive of no advantage or good effect; vain; idle; useless; unprofitable; as, a fruitless attempt; a fruitless controversy. "They in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours."

Synonyms: Useless; barren; unprofitable; abortive; ineffectual; vain; idle; profitless. See Useless.

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Etymology of 'Fruitless'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Fruitless" Quotes from Famous Books

... they were only the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field of religious contention ...

— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... the country there is not one syllable to be found in the correspondence of our ministers, from the first to the last; they felt nothing for a land desolated by fire, sword, and famine: their sympathies took another direction; they were touched with pity for bribery, so long tormented with a fruitless itching of its palms; their bowels yearned for usury, that had long missed the harvest of its returning months;[40] they felt for peculation, which had been for so many years raking in the dust of an empty ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... joy, a world in which each of us may have a noble though a humble part,—the work of the "holy life of action." It will find religion in love and wisdom and virtue, not in bloodless asceticism, philosophical disputation, the maintenance of withered creeds, the cultivation of fruitless emotion, or the recrudescence of forms from which the life has gone out. It is possible, Thoreau tells us, for us to "walk in hallowed cathedrals," and this in our every-day lives of profession or trade. It is the loyalty to duty, the love of God ...

— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan

... because of the assaults of their opponents, but because of their impotence in the face of a grave national crisis. Nevertheless, they were on all essential issues beaten by the Democrats; and on the few occasions on which they were victorious, their victories were both meaningless and fruitless. ...

— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... his fruitless efforts only brought two big tears to his eyes. Then he gazed at his visitors with an expression of indescribable woe, his jaws ...

— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

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