Pointless means having no purpose worth pursuing. A pointless exercise, utterly pointless, pointless to argue.
It is stronger than useless in one way and weaker in another: something useless does not work, and something pointless may work perfectly and still be worth nothing. It is pointless to is a common construction. Note pointlessly; and that pointless in a game or competition also literally means having scored no points, which is a rare source of genuine ambiguity in sports writing.
1adjectivepointlessHaving no purpose worth pursuing.
“It's pointless trying to fix that old printer; just buy a new one.”
synonyms: futile, purposeless
pointless is a quality of purposelessness.
The word is point plus -less. Point comes from Latin punctum, a pricked mark, from pungere, to prick — the same root as puncture and pungent, so the point of an argument and the point of a pin are one word.
Middle English
pointles
English, today
pointless
From Middle English pointles, poynteles, poyntlees. by surface analysis, en + point + less.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA