Noun

(en-noun)

(uncountable) The quality of being futile or useless.

His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility .

(countable) Something, especially an act, that is futile.

*{{quote-book, year=1803, author=Thomas Jefferson, title=Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him, his sophisms, futilities , and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? }}

*1843 , '', book 3, chapter XIII, ''Democracy

No man oppresses thee, can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shewn. […] No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go: but thy own futilities , bewilderments, thy false appetites for Money, Windsor Georges and such like?

*{{quote-book, year=1919, author=F. Scott Fitzgerald, title=This Side of Paradise, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=But men will chatter and you and I will still shout our futilities to each other across the stage until the last silly curtain falls plump! upon our bobbing heads. }}

* {{quote-news, year=2009, date=September 5, author=Robert Clark, title=Exhibition preview: Goya: Fantasies, Follies And Disasters, Manchester, work=Guardian citation

, passage=There are moments of profound existential angst, howls of despair at the absurd futilities of war and a sneering disgust at the soul-destroying wastage of human potential. }}

(uncountable) Unimportance.

Noun

(uncountable) The condition, or the degree, of being fertile.

Muckspreading increases the fertility of the soil.

(countable) The birthrate of a population; the number of live births per 1000 people per year.

The average number of births per woman within a population.