useful

adjective

use·ful | \ ˈyüs-fəl

Definition of useful

1 : capable of being put to use especially : serviceable for an end or purpose useful tools

2 : of a valuable or productive kind do something useful with your life

Other Words from useful Synonyms & Antonyms More Example Sentences Learn More about useful

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Examples of useful in a Sentence

Does anyone have any useful suggestions? It can be useful to know CPR. The Internet is useful for finding information quickly. She has become one of the team's most useful players. Why don't you do something useful with your life?

Recent Examples on the Web

Remodeling a kitchen or bathrooms, replacing the roof and heating system, or the replacing a private septic system – all these things increase the livability and add years to the useful life of a home. — Anchorage Daily News, "The age of your house isn’t just about the year it was built. Here’s why that’s important when you’re selling.," 22 June 2018 Retpoline, then, will be useful for those with older PCs. — Mark Hachman, PCWorld, "Recent Windows 10 patch brings good, bad performance news for PC gamers," 7 Mar. 2019 Yet the intervals between earthquakes are so varied — ranging from 44 years to 305 years — that taking the average is not a very useful prediction tool. — Cade Metz, The Seattle Times, "The next Big One? Earthquake scientists look to AI.," 26 Oct. 2018 Unfortunately, floss isn't strong enough to slice through a watermelon's rind, but if that prep work is done ahead of time, this is a pretty useful hack. — Olivia Harrison, refinery29.com, "We've Been Cutting Watermelon Incorrectly Our Whole Lives," 28 June 2018 Here’s a helpful demonstration of that in GIF form: This simple relationship has proved enormously useful for math and engineering throughout the course of human history. — Brian Resnick, Vox, "The math of pi explained, as simply as possible," 13 Mar. 2019 While his defensive contributions and overall decision-making can be dubious, a player like Green who has playoff experience, some juice left in the tank and can offer just enough floor-spacing and size should prove useful to the Wizards. — Jeremy Woo, SI.com, "Grades: If Wizards' Locker Room Survives, Dwight Howard and Jeff Green Are Worthy Gambles," 3 July 2018 There exist many other methods in the class that can prove useful to you: getEelemntsByTagName, createAttribute, createTextNode, and createCDATASection just to name a few. — Kevin Guebert, Outside Online, "HTML Parsing with the DOMDocument," 20 June 2018 Photo: Alastair Gale/The Wall Street Journal Newer branches of Strange Hotel are sticking to the robots that have proven useful. — Takashi Mochizuki, WSJ, "Robot Hotel Loses Love for Robots," 14 Jan. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'useful.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Last Updated

23 May 2019

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Time Traveler for useful

The first known use of useful was in 1595

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More Definitions for useful

useful

adjective

English Language Learners Definition of useful

: helping to do or achieve something

See the full definition for useful in the English Language Learners Dictionary

useful

adjective

use·ful | \ ˈyüs-fəl

Kids Definition of useful

1 : capable of being put to use : usable useful scraps of material

2 : helpful in doing or achieving something If you are ever planning a vacation, you may find it useful to acquire a guidebook …— Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill