Futility vs Pointlessness - What's the difference?
futility | pointlessness |
(uncountable) The quality of being futile or useless.
(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=
, 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
*{{quote-book, year=1919, author=F. Scott Fitzgerald, title=This Side of Paradise, chapter=, edition=
, 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
, 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.
The lack of meaning, purpose, or ideas; the characteristic or condition of being pointless.
:The pointlessness of the discussion only compounded her boredom.
As nouns the difference between futility and pointlessness
is that futility is (uncountable) the quality of being futile or useless while pointlessness is the lack of meaning, purpose, or ideas; the characteristic or condition of being pointless.futility
English
Noun
(en-noun)- His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility .
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- 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?
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