[ad. F. futilité or L. fūti-, futtilitātem, f. futtilis: see FUTILE and -ITY.]
1. The quality of being futile; triflingness, want of weight or importance; esp. inadequacy to produce a result or bring about a required end, ineffectiveness, uselessness.
1623. Cockeram, Futilitie, vanitie.
1654. R. Whitlock, Ζωοτομια, 477. Divine Poems … might well absolve Poetry off its objected Futility, and Levity.
1732. Berkeley, Alciphr., V. § 19. Whatever futility there may be in their Notions.
1777. Priestley, Disc. Philos. Necess., 204. Shew the futility of these replies, if you can.
1845. McCulloch, Taxation, II. vi. (1852), 253. We nave already seen the futility of all attempts to assess taxes proportionally to real profits.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 117, Protagoras, Introduction. The manifest futility and absurdity of the explanation of ἐμῶν ἐπαίνημι ἀλαθέως, which is hardly consistent with the rational interpretation of the rest of the poem.
1879. M. Arnold, Mixed Ess., Irish Cathol., 104. We should recognize the futility of contending against the most rooted of prejudices.
2. Disposition to trifle or be occupied with trifles, incapacity for serious affairs or interests, lack of purpose, frivolousness.
1692. Bentley, Boyle Lect., 28. The same trifling futility appears in their XII Signs of the Zodiack, and their mutual Relations and Aspects.
1748. Chesterf., Lett. (1792), II. clvi. 57. If they [diversions] are futile and frivolous, it is time worse than lost, for they will give you an habit of futility.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 25, 7 Oct., ¶ 11. Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings, let it watch diligently against the incursion of vice, and leave foppery and futility to die of themselves.
1856. Mrs. C. Clarke, Shaks. Char., xx. (1863), 507. If they go right, it is from pure good hap; if they go wrong, it is from utter futility and incapacity to keep out of harm’s way.
1866. Geo. Eliot, F. Holt, II. xxiii. 128. The noisy futility that belongs to schismatics generally.
† 3. Talkativeness, loquacity, inability to hold one’s tongue. Cf. FUTILE a. 3. Obs.
1640. Watts, trans. Bacon’s Adv. Learn., VIII. ii. 383. The Futility of vaine Persons, which easily utter, as well what may be spoken, as what should be secreted.
1692. R. L’Estrange, Fables, ccccxxvii. This Fable does not strike so much at the Futility of Women in General, as at the Incontinent Levity of a Prying Inquisitive Humour.
4. Something that is futile.
1667. Bp. S. Parker, Free & Impart. Censure, 100. I am sure that those Notions … were but grand and pompous Futilities.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes, iii. (1841), 163. He was but a loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he was not at all. Ibid. (1843), Past & Pr., I. i. His mouth full of loud futilities.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind., 222. The eye is the only note-book of the true poet; but a patchwork of second-hand memories is a laborious futility, hard to write and harder to read, with about as much nature in it as a dialogue of the Deipnosophists.
1871. Morley, Voltaire (1886), 8. To reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence.
