FUTILE in a Sentence

Learn FUTILE from example sentences; some of them are from classic books. These examples are selected from a corpus with 300,000 sentences, including classic works and current mainstream media. Some sentences also link to their contexts.

51 example sentences for FUTILE, such as:

1. All this talk seemed to me so futile.
2. He saw clearly too his own futile isolation.
3. My efforts to go back to sleep proved futile.
4. Trying to please other people is largely a futile activity.
5. He brought his arm up in a futile attempt to ward off the blow.

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 Meanings and Examples of FUTILE
Definition Example Sentence Classic Sentence
futile
 a.  useless; having no useful result; vain
Classic Sentence: (40 in 3 pages)
1  For the dozenth time, she ran out onto the porch but this time she did not go back to her futile packing.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXIII
2  Scarlett's search was futile until in the orchard she found a few apples.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXIV
3  Here was the end of the kindly, courteous house which had always welcomed her, the house where in futile dreams she had aspired to be mistress.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXV
4  At Christmas time Frank Kennedy and a small troop from the commissary department jogged up to Tara on a futile hunt for grain and animals for the army.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXVIII
5  No, I suddenly found myself on the curtain, an actor, posturing and making futile gestures.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXXI
6  Officially, Georgia's government had never capitulated but it had been a futile fight, an ever-losing fight.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XLVII
7  She felt that she would stifle if she stayed in Atlanta another day, with her tired mind forcing itself round and round the deeply worn circle of futile thoughts about the mess she was in.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER LVII
8  Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished play of feature.
House of Mirth By Edith Wharton
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 1: Chapter 4
9  She was visited by no more outbursts, moving her to such futile expedients.
The Awakening By Kate Chopin
Context  Highlight   In XIX
10  One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace of him were futile.
The Jungle By Upton Sinclair
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 12
11  His voice sounded thin and futile after the other's, and to Jurgis it seemed a profanation.
The Jungle By Upton Sinclair
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 29
12  They clamored at each other, numbers making futile bids for the popular attention.
The Red Badge of Courage By Stephen Crane
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 1
13  The letters cut in the stained wood of the desk stared upon him, mocking his bodily weakness and futile enthusiasms and making him loathe himself for his own mad and filthy orgies.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James Joyce
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 2
14  He saw clearly too his own futile isolation.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James Joyce
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 2
15  All this talk seemed to me so futile.
Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad
Context  Highlight   In I
Example Sentence:
1  Trying to please other people is largely a futile activity.
2  Attempts to get supplies to the region are futile because troops will not allow the aid convoy to enter the city.
3  He brought his arm up in a futile attempt to ward off the blow.
4  My efforts to go back to sleep proved futile.
5  Like many in Russia, she blamed the country'sfailings on futile attempts to catch up with the West.
6  Do you simply ignore in futile hope that will cause them to go away?
7  However, attempting to retaliate is either futile or dangerous ethically.
8  He was accused of being a demagogue because he made promises that aroused futile hopes in his listeners.
9  And even if the good guys could be sorted from the bad guys, the barrage of intermittent gunfire made any escape seem futile.
10  At this moment of success I found only an unreasoning sense of futility.
11  Work is the way that people seek to redeem their lives from futility.