nonproductive

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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 Bring The Office Closer To Them As populations grow, the real challenge of coming to the office is long commute times and the resulting nonproductive cycles. Expert Panel®, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2024 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 Bring The Office Closer To Them As populations grow, the real challenge of coming to the office is long commute times and the resulting nonproductive cycles. Expert Panel®, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2024 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 Remove all twiggy, dead or nonproductive growth. oregonlive, 8 Mar. 2022 But will this calculation include all the opportunity cost of the expenditure of nonproductive effort? WSJ, 16 Aug. 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
  • Greenwashing is controversial, with clubs sometimes hiding behind worthless carbon credits or offsetting emissions to make claims of climate leadership rather than seeking ways to actually reduce their emissions.
    Matt Woosnam, New York Times, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Anything less than a total social reckoning—a complete psychological makeover of white America—was worthless.
    Louis Menand, New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • An individual who lacks empathy may excel at making hard choices like laying off staff or shutting down unprofitable teams.
    Shawn Cole, Forbes.com, 27 June 2025
  • Marchionne, a philosophy major who was known for his astute remarks, was discussing the challenges ahead for the automaker and changing automotive industry, including not chasing unprofitable businesses — which Filosa and Stellantis must continue to address.
    Michael Wayland, CNBC, 23 June 2025
Adjective
  • Yet even in this willfully unproductive use of leisure time, work hovers overhead like a ghost.
    Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Allow that the firing of a career bureaucrat may have been unfair and unproductive.
    George Calhoun, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • Neighbors attempted to rescue her but were unsuccessful, the sheriff’s office said.
    Nour Rahal, Freep.com, 5 Aug. 2025
  • The brothers reportedly offered their attacker a hot dog in exchange for a peaceful exit, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
    Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News, 4 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless.
    Lea Veloso, StyleCaster, 14 Aug. 2025
  • The silence from her network was deafening, and feeding her resume to application portals only to get no response began to feel pointless.
    Amanda Miller Littlejohn, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • The deals typically provide revenue for the host community while enabling the solar industry to cover essentially useless land with solar panels rather than taking out-of-service farmland, open fields or similar space.
    Don Stacom, Hartford Courant, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Infrastructure is useless without operators who can manage it.
    Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 5 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • Brat Summer, last year’s abortive attempt to turn the screechy Charli XCX album of that name into a culture-spanning event, has given way to a season without name or form.
    Armin Rosen, The Washington Examiner, 25 July 2025
  • 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
  • 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

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Cite this Entry

“Nonproductive.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nonproductive. Accessed 20 Aug. 2025.

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