Nugatory

WORD OF THE DAY

nugatory / adjective / NOO-guh-tor-ee

Definition
1a: of little or no consequence
1b: trifling, inconsequential
2a: having no force
2b: inoperative

Examples
“Elsewhere [on Death Cab for Cutie’s latest album], [Ben Gibbard] … continues his apparent affinity for writing songs about driving on ‘Wheat Like Waves’ and the gorgeously golden ‘Rand McNally,’ named after the now nugatory road atlas books.”
— Madeline Roth, The Daily Beast, 27 Aug. 2022

Yet all of these questions seem, increasingly, merely nostalgic, nugatory, in the face of the dissolution of the common solidarity of principles that had once made the liberation happen.
—    Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 6 June 2019

Did You Know?

Just because nugatory isn’t the most common word in the English language doesn’t mean it’s trifling.
Rather, nugatory is literally trifling because the two words are synonymous, as in “comments too nugatory to merit attention.”
Like its synonyms vain, idle, empty, and hollow, nugatory means "without worth or significance."
But while nugatory suggests triviality or insignificance ("a monarch with nugatory powers," for example), vain implies either absolute or relative absence of value (as in "vain promises").
Idle suggests being incapable of worthwhile use or effect (as in "idle speculations").
Empty and hollow suggest a deceiving lack of real substance or genuineness (as in "an empty attempt at reconciliation" or "a hollow victory").
Nugatory first appeared in English in the 17th century; it comes from the Latin adjective nugatorius, which can mean  “trifling”, “frivolous” and "futile”  but also is ultimately a derivative of the noun nugae, meaning "trifles."
This sense carried over into English as well, and so in some contexts nugatory means “ineffective” or “having no force,” as when Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson invoked “the nugatory value of the contemporary penny.”
Nugatory may mean little to some, but we think it’s worth a pretty penny