as in worthless
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Recent Examples of nonproductive
Course of trade in the oil industry often leaves the public on the hook for nonproductive well cleanup costs, including capping.
—
Andrew Leahey, Forbes, 7 Jan. 2025
Buoyed by the early promise of its Dravet therapeutic, the company developed a second drug candidate, STK-002, that similarly targets splicing to turn nonproductive gene transcripts into constructive ones.
—Elie Dolgin, Discover Magazine, 26 Apr. 2023
But will this calculation include all the opportunity cost of the expenditure of nonproductive effort?
—WSJ, 16 Aug. 2022
Remove all twiggy, dead or nonproductive growth.
—oregonlive, 8 Mar. 2022
In this framework, nonproductive bodies and ways of living become illegitimate in some way.
—John Patrick Leary, The New Republic, 6 Aug. 2021
Andrew Leahey, Forbes, 7 Jan. 2025
Buoyed by the early promise of its Dravet therapeutic, the company developed a second drug candidate, STK-002, that similarly targets splicing to turn nonproductive gene transcripts into constructive ones.
—Elie Dolgin, Discover Magazine, 26 Apr. 2023
But will this calculation include all the opportunity cost of the expenditure of nonproductive effort?
—WSJ, 16 Aug. 2022
Remove all twiggy, dead or nonproductive growth.
—oregonlive, 8 Mar. 2022
In this framework, nonproductive bodies and ways of living become illegitimate in some way.
—John Patrick Leary, The New Republic, 6 Aug. 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for nonproductive
Adjective
-
Rare is the business that grows by intermediating what is rendered worthless by the intermediation.—
John Tamny,
Forbes.com,
31 Aug. 2025
-
But these systems require setup time, which is possible before a hurricane surge, but worthless during rain bombs that can turn streets into rivers in minutes.—
Laura Paddison,
CNN Money,
25 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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Poonen said the combination, which brought together his fast-growing but unprofitable firm with the larger, highly profitable Veritas, was a risky but calculated deal.—
Ganesh Rao,
CNBC,
4 Sep. 2025
-
If the ridership falls off even marginally, the result could render the service unprofitable.—
Michael Boyd,
Forbes.com,
30 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
This mismatch between what organizations expect from emerging professionals and what Gen Z has been taught to avoid perpetuates unproductive management practices.—
Ruth Oh Reitmeier,
Forbes.com,
22 Aug. 2025
-
Michael Penix The Falcons’ selection of Penix put the draft on tilt in 2024, but his play at the end of the season — replacing an immobile, unproductive Cousins as starter — showed the upside Atlanta was chasing with their surprise selection at No. 8 overall.—
Jake Ciely,
New York Times,
20 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
But buyout attempts from budget rivals like JetBlue and Frontier were unsuccessful both before and duringSpirt’s first bankruptcy process.—
Preston Fore,
Fortune,
30 Aug. 2025
-
Federal rules require employers to first recruit domestically and, if unsuccessful, to pay H-2B workers the prevailing local wage.—
Robert Alexander,
MSNBC Newsweek,
29 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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Without a redemptive Nature Cure arc, my work was deemed pointless, unsaleable.—
Polly Atkin
August 26,
Literary Hub,
26 Aug. 2025
-
The culture war has been fought over movies, TV shows, video games and ads, but this might be the most baffling, pointless skirmish so far.—
Dani Di Placido,
Forbes.com,
24 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
This method is a significant departure from traditional chemical recycling techniques like pyrolysis, which operate at lower temperatures (450–600°C) and produce over a hundred different by-products, many of which are useless.—
Aman Tripathi,
Interesting Engineering,
3 Sep. 2025
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Economists usually look at new jobs, but immigration is now very low, making that figure useless as a measure of how the economy is doing.—
Bill Conerly,
Forbes.com,
30 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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Garbowit recalls that there were only around sixteen members of Congress lined up behind Thanedor’s abortive resolution—so the fact that Green’s follow-up motion garnered seventy-nine supporters in the caucus is a sign of progress.—
Chris Lehmann,
Harpers Magazine,
20 Aug. 2025
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On the one hand, as Tevye is fond of saying, the story unfolds in a hardscrabble shtetl in the Ukrainian plains in the months leading up to the Russian Empire’s abortive 1905 revolution.—
David Lyman,
The Enquirer,
25 July 2025
Adjective
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The position advanced by the states is legally unavailing as a matter of longstanding and well-established law.—
WSJ,
WSJ,
25 July 2018
-
Efforts to aid him with lifeboats, three of which were ineffectually trying to breast the heavy sea, were unavailing, while a lifeline, held by a number of rescuers, was carried far out into the surf by a number of swimmers.—
sandiegouniontribune.com,
sandiegouniontribune.com,
6 May 2018
Cite this Entry
“Nonproductive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nonproductive. Accessed 7 Sep. 2025.
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