nugatory · /ˈnju:ɡət(ə)rɪ/ · /NYOO-gə-tree/. adjective. Worthless, trifling, inconsequential. From Latin nūgārī (to jest), from nūgae(trifles).
“For some reason the physical world was feeling more and more nugatory. He thought that perhaps this was a consequence or side-effect of the time he was living through: the sudden eschatology of the streets; the tubed saplings and their caged trash…” (Martin Amis)
“It would have helped to have had a bona fide experience with a bona fide vagina, but his inability not to hear “boner fide” made the chances of that as nugatory as did his use of the word nugatory.” (Jonathan Safran Foer)
“But these physical defects were nugatory when set against his moral earnestness and the compelling charm of his softly resonant voice.” (Evelyn Waugh)
“It could be used to rationalize stealing the pennies from a dead man’s eyes, true, even considering the nugatory value of the contemporary penny.” (Marilynne Robinson)
“…the midnight of his eyes gazed emptily before him like an assertion that everything which took place on the Giantship was evanescent and nugatory.” (Stephen R. Donaldson)
“We call upon the human in humanity to surge forth. We stand for the retrieval, in the shadowy heart of human identity, of that radiant component that many forerunners have fought so hard to show us, that our most inspired forebears have put to such good use, building rare Andalusias which now, alas, attract only trigger-happy monsters and frantic consumers of the ephemeral and the nugatory.” (Mia Couto)
“The amount of energy actually liberated in the burning of these fossil fuels is tiny by planetary scales – ten terawatts or so a year, not that much more than the nugatory contribution made by the tides. But the side effects are huge.” (Bill Bryson)
“Of course ”The Doctor“ is not a work of art. In it form is not used as an object of emotion, but as a means of suggesting emotions. This alone suffices to make it nugatory; it is worse than nugatory because the emotion it suggests is false.” (Clive Bell)