Word.ws English Dictionary

purchaseless

purchaseless adjective: devoid of grip or purchase.

Adjective

purchaseless (not comparable)

  1. Devoid of grip or purchase.
    • The use of these projections […] is to apply upon the foetal scalp a pressure, counter to that made on the skull by the teeth of the crotchet, in order to ensure the penetration of the latter without the possibility of their slipping purchaseless along the smooth cranial bones, or of failure from...1841, David Daniel Davis, The principles and practice of obstetric medicine, page 848
    • As he clawed at the gully's purchaseless walls, the laminar flow of snow debris rose to his waist, his chest, and then his shoulders, drawing him inexorably under, until snow topped his head and locked him into darkness.2007, Jill Fredston, Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches, page 112

Origin of purchaseless

From purchase + -less.

Questions about purchaseless

What does purchaseless mean?
Purchaseless means devoid of grip or purchase.
What part of speech is purchaseless?
Purchaseless is an adjective.

Words near purchaseless in the dictionary

  1. purchase shears
  2. purchase system
  3. purchase to pay
  4. purchaseable
  5. purchased
  6. purchaseless
  7. purchaser
  8. purchasers
  9. purchasership
  10. purchases
  11. purchasest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: purchaseless (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “purchaseless.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/purchaseless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.