meaningless
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of meaningless
Explanation
If something's meaningless, it has no real value, purpose, or significance. If someone repeatedly hurts your feelings and casually says they're sorry, you might feel like the apology is meaningless. Words in a book will be meaningless to you if they're written in a language you don't understand, and the small talk you engage in when you run into an acquaintance at the supermarket is often meaningless too. You can probably think of rules that don't have any good reason behind them, and these are also meaningless. When something is important to you, it has meaning — and when it's not, it's meaningless.
Vocabulary lists containing meaningless
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Without assigning a sense of consequence, the money becomes meaningless to the kid, said Matt Chancey, a certified financial planner and founder of Tax Alpha Companies in Florida.
From MarketWatch • May 29, 2026
He also said he had a discussion in 2011 with Epstein about scaffolding, which he called "meaningless and inconsequential".
From BBC • May 14, 2026
UMA founder Hart Lambur said in an email that the potential conflicts weren’t large enough to matter: “These votes didn’t shift the overall vote outcome at all and were meaningless to the final resolution.”
From Barron's • May 12, 2026
In dissent, she quoted Marshall’s warning that if all the voting districts in the South have white majorities, Black citizens will be left with a “right to cast meaningless ballots.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 5, 2026
George Orwell once wrote that whenever a critic uses the word human, he usually renders it meaningless.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
