nugatory

Adjective

nugatory (comparative more nugatory, superlative most nugatory)

1. Trivial, trifling or of little importance.
   • In sorrow and disgust, you wander over those multitudinous Books: you dwell in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory: to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere to be had.1858, Thomas Carlyle, chapter I, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC
   • I might refer to the general conviction and the common sense of society that such an investment cannot be treated as absolutely idle and nugatory.1872, Benjamin Disraeli, Suez Canal Speech
2. Ineffective, invalid or futile.
   • I can not dismiss the subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans...1792, George Washington, Fourth State of the Union Address
   • Even among the most experienced and discriminating of men, she rarely allowed the élite of the high-born or distinguished to escape her temporary allurements, so that she was the absolute horror, alike of the designing, whose baits she rendered nugatory, and the innocent attached ones, whose...1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 204
3. Having no force, inoperative, ineffectual.
   • But these regulations would have been impotent and nugatory, had not the licentious nobles been awed by the sword of the civil power.1788, Edward Gibbon, chapter LXX, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume VI, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC
   • The word "necessary" is considered as controlling the whole sentence, and as limiting the right to pass laws for the execution of the granted powers to such as are indispensable, and without which the power would be nugatory.1819, Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland (17 U.S. 316)
4. Removable from a computer program with safety, but harmless if retained.