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PURPOSELESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Not evidencing any purpose or goal
Classified under:
Similar:
adrift; afloat; aimless; directionless; planless; rudderless; undirected (aimlessly drifting)
desultory (marked by lack of definite plan or regularity or purpose; jumping from one thing to another)
Also:
meaningless; nonmeaningful (having no meaning or direction or purpose)
Antonym:
purposeful (serving as or indicating the existence of a purpose or goal)
Derivation:
purposelessness (the quality of lacking any definite purpose)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being
Example:
senseless violence
Synonyms:
otiose; pointless; purposeless; senseless; superfluous; wasted
Classified under:
Similar:
worthless (lacking in usefulness or value)
Derivation:
purposelessness (the quality of lacking any definite purpose)
Context examples:
Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Her expression was curiously familiar—it was an expression I had often seen on women's faces but on Myrtle Wilson's face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
