Fruitless means producing no result whatever. A fruitless search, fruitless negotiations, entirely fruitless.
It judges the outcome rather than the effort, which is why fruitless is so often paired with hours and days — a fruitless search was still a search. It is milder than futile, which says the thing could never have worked. Note the metaphor, which is agricultural and very old: effort bears fruit or it does not.
1adjectivefruitlessProducing no result whatever.
“After a fruitless search for his keys, he called a locksmith.”
synonyms: unproductive, vain
fruitless is a quality of yielding nothing.
Middle English fruytles is fruit plus -less. The metaphor of effort bearing fruit is older than English.
Middle English
fruytles
English, today
fruitless
Middle English fruytles; equivalent to fruit + less. Compare Middle English withouten fruyt (“fruitless”) literally “without fruit”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA