- 1
If an action is futile, it is useless because it has almost no chance of working. You try, you push, you talk — and it still cannot succeed. A futile attempt, a futile search, futile resistance: the effort is real; the hope is empty. It is a fairly formal, written-sounding adjective, stronger and colder than ‘it didn’t work’. It comments on the point of trying, not only on the result. People also stretch it to feelings and talk: a futile argument is one that will never change anyone. It does not mean future, and it does not mean silly in a light way; it means ‘this cannot succeed’.
徒勞的、白費的、徒勞無功的
組成Borrowed from Middle French futile, from Latin fūtilis (worthless, useless).
同家族的字
- futilitythe noun: the uselessness of trying when it cannot work
原始詞典資料2 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。
futileadj/ˈfjuː.taɪl/
- 1
Incapable of producing results, useless; doomed not to be successful; not worth attempting.
- But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy’s neglect was more than ordinarily evident.
- He seemed hitherto to have been living by proxy, in a vision, in reflection—to have been an echo, a shadow, a futile attempt;[…]
- 2
Insignificant; frivolous.
- Of its history little is recorded, and that little futile.
- This idiosyncrasy is brought out by social pressure, while in a state of nature it might have betrayed itself only in trivial and futile ways, as it does among barbarians.
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。