nugatory

adj

Etymology: Borrowed from Latin nūgātōrius.

1. Trivial, trifling or of little importance.

   “In sorrow and disgust, you wander over those multitudinous Books: you dwell in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory: to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere to be had.”

   “I might refer to the general conviction and the common sense of society that such an investment cannot be treated as absolutely idle and nugatory.”

2. Ineffective, invalid or futile.

   “I can not dismiss the subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory.”

   “Even among the most experienced and discriminating of men, she rarely allowed the élite of the high-born or distinguished to escape her temporary allurements, so that she was the absolute horror, alike of the designing, whose baits she rendered nugatory, and the innocent attached ones, whose expectations she blighted, and whose young hearts were lacerated by the perfidy of those whom she misled.”

3. Having no force, inoperative, ineffectual.

   “But these regulations would have been impotent and nugatory, had not the licentious nobles been awed by the sword of the civil power.”

   “The word "necessary" is considered as controlling the whole sentence, and as limiting the right to pass laws for the execution of the granted powers to such as are indispensable, and without which the power would be nugatory.”

4. Removable from a computer program with safety, but harmless if retained.