purposelessness
1
8.7
- noun
- /ˈpɜr.pəs.ləs.nəs/
:
falta de propósito
- After achieving his main goal, he was struck by a deep feeling of purposelessness.
Examples
-
Moving, using his arms and legs even in blind purposelessness, was the solution he instinctively clung to.
Fiction book (2001) -
Sometimes people feel a sense of purposelessness when they don’t know what to do with their lives.
-
It's the ability to accept the purposelessness of one's own existence.
Academic text (2004) -
The purposelessness of their frozen gestures is suggested.
Academic text (2017) -
And the dance is its purposelessness and just delighting in the wacky fact of perhaps a meaningless universe and how remarkable that is.
-
Under his cardigan, his shoulders were rounded, seeming without strength, emphasizing the sense of purposelessness about him.
Fiction book (1990) -
It also provides an antidote to the metapathologies of purposelessness and alienation that have been growing in developed countries during recent decades.
Academic text (1993) -
It brought with it a new anxiety about the possible purposelessness of our lives, although this could be allayed to some extent by stories of spirits without bodies as a guarantor of purpose prior to human life or as a promise of continued existence afterward.
Academic text (2009) -
Like so many others, but for different reasons, I settled on Trafalgar Square, wandering around not in straight lines, with the conspicuous purposelessness of the tourist, watching others like and unlike myself play with the flocks of pigeons there.
Fiction book (1991) -
There is a recurring sense that the discipline is in a state of crisis; that it is becoming increasingly marked by purposelessness, normative vacancy, and practical political irrelevance (Farr and Seidelman 1993).
Academic text (1995)
Synonyms
175
2.8
A situation in which doing something will not help
58
5.3
A feeling that life has no meaning
4
7.6
A feeling that what you do has no purpose or value
2
6.2
A state when something has no purpose or use
2
7.0
A state of having no meaning or purpose
1
7.0
A lack of clear purpose or direction
A feeling of having no clear purpose or aim
Antonyms
How Purposeful
142
3.0
1
4.9
1
7.0
4
6.0
1
8.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
purposelessness = purposeless (transparent) = purpose + less + ness
The noun is clearly formed by adding '-ness' to the adjective 'purposeless', which itself is transparently 'purpose' + '-less'.
Etymology
The word purposelessness comes from purpose ('an aim' or 'intention') plus -less ('without') and -ness ('a state'), so it means the state of having no aim or reason.