feckless

Adjective

feckless (comparative more feckless, superlative most feckless)

1. Lacking purpose.
   • It is the beauty of great games when they are played at their highest level and the extraordinary thing now is that we do not have to trawl back through all the years of your inexorable progress from feckless beach boy to master sportsman.2005 September 10, Canberra Times
2. Without skill, ineffective, incompetent.
   • This was the West Lancashire Railway, an ambitious but feckless little concern which, in a life lasting a quarter of a century, never earned a dividend, failed to keep up its debenture payments (despite a dangerous attempt to do so by issuing more debentures) and ended up in the hands of a receiver.1960 March, M. D. Greville and G. O. Holt, “Railway Development in Preston—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 201
   • “Lana, when I want you to talk, I will tell you. And until then, zip it.” “Wha-- what did I do?” “Nothing.” “Yeah, Lana.” “Which is why these feckless idiots lost 200 kilos of cocaine.” “Yeah, Lan-- oh. OK. Technically. But then we stole a plane loaded with, like, twice as much cocaine.” “Is this...2014 March 24, Adam Reed, “On the Carpet” (4:14 from the start), in Archer, season 5, episode 9, spoken by Malory Archer (Jessica Walter)

   Synonyms:

   futile, hopeless, ineffective, ineffectual, feeble, meaningless, useless, unpurposed, worthless, aimless

3. Lacking the courage to act in any meaningful way.
   • China is “proving to be a feckless friend for its authoritarian allies,” Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China under President Joe Biden, wrote on X.2026 March 6, Charlie Campbell, quoting Nicholas Burns, “The Iran War Has Distracted and Depleted the U.S. Military. But It May Also Have Saved Taiwan”, in Time, archived from the original on 06 Mar...
4. (UK, archaic) Lacking vitality.