nugatory
/ˈn(j)uːɡətɔɹi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.41 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
4
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Trivial, trifling or of little importance.
adj
Ineffective, invalid or futile.
adj
Having no force, inoperative, ineffectual.
adj
Removable from a computer program with safety, but harmless if retained.
Example Sentences
- "In sorrow and disgust, you wander over those multitudinous Books: you dwell in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory: to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere to be had."
- "I might refer to the general conviction and the common sense of society that such an investment cannot be treated as absolutely idle and nugatory."
- ""My dear boy, you must not let money become your master in this way. [...] You should go to the play as part of your education. If you read the lives of eminent men you will find that quite half of them made their first acquaintance with drama from the gallery. I am told there is no pleasure like it. It is there that you find the real critics and devotees. It is called 'sitting with the gods.' The expense is nugatory, and even while you wait for admission in the street you are diverted by 'buskers.'...""
- "I can not dismiss the subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory."
- "Even among the most experienced and discriminating of men, she rarely allowed the élite of the high-born or distinguished to escape her temporary allurements, so that she was the absolute horror, alike of the designing, whose baits she rendered nugatory, and the innocent attached ones, whose expectations she blighted, and whose young hearts were lacerated by the perfidy of those whom she misled."
- "According to these highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying[…]had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man’s own righteousness."
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin nūgae Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -or Latin nūgor Proto-Indo-European *-tōr Proto-Italic *-tōr Latin -tor Latin nūgātōr Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English nugatory From Latin nūgātōr (“jester”) + English -y (“adjectival suffix”). Borrowed from Latin nūgātōrius, from nūgātor m (“jester”) + -ius (“suffix forming adjectives”).
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
more nugatory (comparative)
most nugatory (superlative)