countless
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of countless
Explanation
Countless means more than you could possibly count. If you have countless reasons why you love living in New York, there are so many reasons that you can't list them all. Countless is a good adjective to use when you want to emphasize how endless, huge, or immeasurable something is. Your could say that smoke detectors save countless lives each year, or that your principal has tried countless times to ban soda at school, only to be outvoted by the student council over and over. The word dates from the 16th century, from the verb count, with its Old French root, conter, "add up."
Vocabulary lists containing countless
Much Ado: Synonyms for "Many"
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Talk Like Shakespeare Day, List 6
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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.
"She touched countless lives with her warmth, humility and generosity of spirit."
From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2026
We are left with a frustratingly vague musing on the unfathomable nature of life: “Imagine raindrops falling on a broad stretch of land. Each one of us is a nameless raindrop among countless drops.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026
“Anthropic ran roughshod over the rights of countless creatives and rightsholders,” the lawsuit charged, “using their works without permission, removing identifying information from those works, and keeping ill-gotten gains for itself.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2026
Muscles use it to contract, cells need it to grow and repair themselves, and countless biological processes depend on a steady supply.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 24, 2026
Fa had carved countless whistles just like this one, and they’d always made a clear, bird-like chirp.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
