fruitless effort
1
4.4
- noun
- /ˈfruːt.ləs ˈɛf.ərt/
:
esfuerzo infructuoso
- Asking for internet forgiveness is a fruitless effort; the internet is a very unforgiving place to be in the first place.
Examples
-
The town's mayor, Phyllis Dartmoor, had initially been as hostile toward the group as the council members, but after a short flurry of fruitless efforts to force the Voyagers out of town, she had become surprisingly sanguine about the situation.
Fiction book (1997) -
However, the rest of the language is more resistant to change, particularly through school lessons (see Weaver, 1996, for the many fruitless efforts over decades to improve students' written grammar).
Academic text (2012) -
ANGLES ON: FRODO makes a final fruitless effort to escape, but to no avail...
Fiction book (2002) -
The fruitless efforts of the American reform movement came to a halt when the Coleman Report on Language Instruction was issued in the 1930s.
Academic text (1994) -
So then I had called Amber, as I'd been doing all week in a fruitless effort to make another date with her, and asked her to inform Flanders.
Fiction book (1990) -
Sadly, it is a fruitless effort, as once she is done, the spineless competitor(s) who are applying links to us will just do it again.
Blog text (11) -
His fruitless efforts to get close to Jose Claudio are compensated by Mariana's welcoming openness toward him.
Academic text (1997) -
After Sanford failed in one of many fruitless efforts to win another American diplomatic post, a courtier of Leopold's wrote him, "The King is pleased that you will continue to reside among us where everyone loves and appreciates you."
Academic text (1998) -
Following four years of fruitless efforts to bring about negotiations on the Reagan plan, Jordan's King Hussein decided in July 1988 that he was not interested in sponsoring a Palestinian homeland under Jordan's sovereignty and that only the Palestinians could negotiate about their future.
Academic text (1990) -
After countless hours of brainstorming, the team's fruitless effort to redesign the product left everyone feeling frustrated.
Synonyms
557
1.3
Not reaching what was planned or expected
39
4.9
Something that has no chance of success
29
7.0
A feeling or situation when something is useless because it cannot succeed
22
6.6
A hopeless search for something that does not exist
12
7.2
A task that has no chance of success
12
5.1
An effort that is not likely to succeed
3
7.0
An attempt that fails to get the result you wanted
3
2.9
An action that uses effort but achieves nothing useful
1
3.8
An action that uses time and energy but gives no useful result
How Bad
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an unsuccessful attempt' is directly and transparently derivable from combining 'fruitless' (failing to produce beneficial outcomes) with 'effort' (an attempt). This adjective + noun composition follows regular English semantics and has clear cross‑linguistic parallels, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the phrase's meaning.
Etymology
Fruitless effort comes from the simple picture of a tree that is fruitless — it produces no fruit even after much care, and effort means hard work. So a fruitless effort is work that gives 'no result'.