futility

Noun

futility (usually uncountable, plural futilities)

1. (usually) The quality of being futile or useless.
   • an exercise of futility
   • His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility.
2. (countable, usually) Something, especially an act, that is futile.
   • But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him, his sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities, and what remains?1803, Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson
   • No man oppresses thee, can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shewn. […] No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go: but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false appetites for Money, Windsor Georges and such like?1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “chapter XIII, Democracy”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern...
3. (usually) Unimportance.
   • Her empty chatter, her futility, her childish coquetry and frivolity—such light wares could hardly be the whole substance of any woman’s being; […]1879, Henry James, chapter XVII, in Confidence, London: Chatto & Windus