Sunday Word: Nugatory

[sallymn]

nugatory [noo-guh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee, nyoo-]

adjective:
1 of no real value; trifling; worthless.
2 of no force or effect; ineffective; futile; vain

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Examples:

The petitioners through lawyer Kibe Mungai argue that the petition will be rendered nugatory by June 2024 unless the Notice of motion is heard as a matter of urgency and the said petition for hearing and determined sooner. (Dzuya Walter, Petitioners seek CJ Koome’s intervention to have cost of living case certified urgent, Citizen Digital, January 2024)

In any event, at this stage, we are of the view that a conservatory order will, not only preserve the status quo but also save Portside Companies themselves from nugatory expenditure should the appeal succeed. (Sam Kiplagat, Court stops Joho family firm Sh5.9bn grain facility at Mombasa port, Business Daily, July 2024)

Yates is like many figures in 20th-century American literature: an early flowering of an intriguing talent rendered nugatory by crowding, tormenting demons - drink, drugs, self-doubt, self-loathing, burn-out and so on. (William Boyd, Tough is the night, The Spectator, December 2004)

I fancy the writer could hardly propose anything more alarming to those immediately interested in that navigation than such a repeal. If he does not mean this, he has got no farther than a nugatory proposition, which nobody can contradict, and for which no man is the wiser. (Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke)

According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,-conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,-had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man’s own righteousness. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)

Origin:

'trifling, of no value; invalid, futile,' c. 1600, from Latin nugatorius 'worthless, trifling, futile,' from nugator 'jester, trifler, braggart,' from nugatus, past participle of nugari 'to trifle, jest, play the fool,' from nugæ 'jokes, jests, trifles,' a word of unknown origin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)