- 1
If something is fruitless, you tried hard but you did not get what you wanted. A fruitless search finds nothing. A fruitless argument changes nobody's mind. The feeling is 'a lot of work, no result'. It is a little more careful and written than a blunt word like useless. Though actually, nobody is talking about apples or a tree with no fruit; people stretch it to any attempt that goes nowhere. You will hear it after effort has already been spent, not before someone starts.
徒勞無功的；毫無結果的
組成fruit + -less ('without'). Inherited from Middle English fruytles. Older English also said withouten fruyt, 'without fruit'.
同家族的字
- fruitthe piece that here means 'result', as in a plan that bears fruit
- fruitfullynot this word — see fruitful: bringing a good result, the opposite idea
- fruitfulthe opposite idea: bringing a good result
- fruitlesslythe adverb: doing something in a fruitless way
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
fruitlessadj/ˈfɹuːtləs/
- 1
Bearing no fruit; barren.
- [S]he [Rachel Carson] also warned of falls in which "there was no pollination and there would be no fruit." […] The entomologist Stephen L. Buchmann and the crop ecologist Gary Paul Nabhan amplified Carson's warning in their 1996 book, The Forgotten Pollinators. They predicted fruitless falls unless our land-use patterns changed fast. But few people paid attention.
- 2
Unproductive, useless.
- The unskilled man’s attempt at fixing his car engine was fruitless.
- Here alſo ſprong that goodly golden fruit, / With which Acontius got his louer trew, / Whom he had long time ſought with fruitleſſe ſuit; […]
- 3
archaicOf a person: unable to have children; barren, infertile.
- The fruitless woman desperately wanted to have children.
- According to that Cabaliſticall Dogma: If Abram had not had this Letter [i.e., ה (he)] added unto his Name he had remained fruitleſſe, and without the power of generation: […] So that being ſterill before, he received the power of generation from that meaſure and manſion in the Archetype; and was made conformable unto Binah.
- 4
rareOf a diet, etc.: without fruit.
- The first fruits of the season were eagerly sought after, and everybody was thankful that once more dread winter with its unvarying monotony of fruitless meals was a thing of the past.
- Bearing this fact in mind will help dispel the confusion and apparent contradictions that surround us in the field of nutrition—the many individual claims as to the ideal diet, for instance, the high-carbohydrate diet, the milkless diet, the breadless diet, the meatless diet, the fruit diet or the fruitless diet, the high-protein or the low-protein diet, and innumerable variations.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。