fruitless

Adjective

fruitless (comparative more fruitless, superlative most fruitless)

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...2008, Rowan Jacobsen, “Breakfast in America”, in Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 20

   Antonyms:

   fruitful

2. (figuratively) 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; […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 55, page 287

   Synonyms:

   bootless, barren, futile, sterile, gainless, idle, dry, ineffectual, inefficacious, inutile

   Antonyms:

   fruitful, effective, efficacious, productive, useful

3. (archaic, figuratively) Of 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...1658, Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus. […]. Chapter V.”, in Hydriotaphia, Urne-buriall, […] Together with The Garden of Cyrus, […], London: […] Hen[ry] Brome […], →OCLC, page 192
4. (rare) Of 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.1923, The Homestead, Bloemfontein: The Proprietors, →OCLC, page 33, column 1
   • 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...1966, Joseph I[rving] Goodman, Alice Propst Hoover, Diet and Live: A Guide to Corrective Eating, Cleveland, Oh.: World Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 14