Nugatory

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

  1. Having little or no value or significance; relating to something that is inconsequential or trivial; denoting an action or thing that is void or ineffective in terms of its impact or worth
  2. Characterized by being worthless or insignificant; associated with matters that lack importance or relevance; describing an endeavor or concept that fails to hold any real efficacy or substance
  3. Referring to something that is essentially meaningless or negligible; pertaining to ideas or objects that bear no noteworthy consequence; indicating a state of nonexistence or futility in practical terms

Etymology: In the mid-first century BC, Catullus opened his book of poems with a mock-modest dedication to the historian Cornelius Nepos: "for you used to think my trifles were something." His word for those trifles was "nugae," and it is the seed of nugatory. In Latin, "nugae" meant jokes, nonsense, trivial things, the stuff of idle talk. It was an everyday word long before Catullus, already at home in the comedies of Plautus. Horace later used it to dismiss verses "empty of matter," calling them "nugae canorae," melodious trifles. From the noun came a verb, "nugari," to trifle or play the fool; from the verb, "nugator," a trifler, jester or windbag; and from that, the adjective "nugatorius," meaning worthless or futile. The chain runs from the nonsense itself, to the person who talks it, to anything with as little substance as his chatter. English borrowed the adjective from Latin around 1600, with "-orius" becoming the familiar "-ory." It arrived as a learned word, part of the wave of Latin vocabulary that scholars and lawyers brought into English in that period, and it kept its Latin sense of trifling or of no worth. Its liveliest career turned out to be in law and argument. A ruling, a treaty clause or a statute could be declared nugatory: still on paper, but stripped of force, as empty as a jester's patter. Legal writers took it up for exactly that kind of thing, and the phrase "rendered nugatory" became a fixture of judgments. So a word whose Latin root Catullus famously used, with a wink, for his own light verse ended up as one of the law's most solemn ways of saying "this counts for nothing."

Synonyms: insignificant, trivial, unimportant, inconsequential, negligible

Antonyms: important, significant, meaningful, valuable, substantial