useful
Americanadjective
-
being of use or service; serving some purpose; advantageous, helpful, or of good effect.
a useful member of society.
- Synonyms:
- beneficial, efficacious, profitable
- Antonyms:
- useless
-
of practical use, as for doing work; producing material results; supplying common needs.
the useful arts; useful work.
- Synonyms:
- beneficial, efficacious, profitable
- Antonyms:
- useless
adjective
-
able to be used advantageously, beneficially, or for several purposes; helpful or serviceable
-
informal commendable or capable
a useful term's work
noun
Other Word Forms
- unuseful adjective
- unusefully adverb
- unusefulness noun
- usefully adverb
- usefulness noun
Etymology
Origin of useful
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.
"I definitely think smart glasses are useful," he said.
From BBC
One of UV-C light's most valuable traits is how strongly it scatters in the atmosphere, which makes it especially useful for non-line-of-sight communication.
From Science Daily
Located just 25 light years from Earth, Fomalhaut is relatively young -- about 440 million years old -- making it a useful stand-in for what the solar system looked like early in its history.
From Science Daily
Like every year, robots are a major presence at CES, with companies hoping they will break into the mainstream as useful devices instead of novelties.
From Barron's
Instead of allowing every possible reaction, early cells selected only a small set of metabolic pathways that could use incoming materials from the "outside" to produce useful new compounds.
From Science Daily
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.
