Word of the Day

: August 10, 2014

bootless

adjective BOOT-lus

What It Means

: useless, unprofitable

bootless in Context

We already knew that our mechanic was on vacation, so any attempt to call him at his garage would be bootless.

"The international alliance that won the Cold War has been bootless in the case of Syria." -David Ignatius, Washington Post, February 12, 2014

Did You Know?

This sense of "bootless" has nothing to do with footwear. The "boot" in this case is an obsolete noun that meant "use" or "avail." That "boot" descended from Old English "bōt" and is ultimately related to our modern word "better," whose remote Germanic ancestor meant literally "of more use." Of course, English does also see the occasional use of "bootless" to mean simply "lacking boots," as Anne Brontë used the word in Agnes Grey (1847): "And what would their parents think of me, if they saw or heard the children rioting, hatless, bonnetless, gloveless, and bootless, in the deep soft snow?"