useful

UK/ˈjuːsfəl/US/ˈjusfəl/

adjectiveA1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,058 of 15,258neutral

Useful means it helps you get something done. A torch during a power cut, a phrase book on your first trip abroad, a friend who happens to know a plumber.

The patterns are useful FOR doing something and useful TO a person: a map is useful for finding the path, and useful to anyone walking it. The adverb is usefully, the noun is usefulness, and the opposite is useless. British English has come in useful — keep the box, it will come in useful — meaning it will turn out to be worth having. One warning worth keeping: call a thing useful and a person helpful. Saying that someone was useful can sound as though you valued them only for what they did for you.

Definitions of useful

1adjectiveusefulHelping you to do or achieve something.A1
“A second pair of scissors is useful when you are wrapping presents.”
synonyms: handy, practical, helpful

Also accepted in games: handy

Phrases it lives in

come in useful — turn out to be worth having at some later point

Where it comes from

Useful is one of the plainest builds in English: use plus the ending -ful. No borrowing, no long journey through other languages. The word says full of use, and that is the whole of it.

Old French
us
Middle English
use
English
use
English, today
useful

Built from

ūtor · Latin — use

From use + ful. use comes from Middle English use, from Old French us. Middle English use, from Old French us, from Latin ūsus (“use, custom, skill, habit”), from past participle stem of ūtor (“use”). Displaced native Middle English note (“use”) (see note) from Old English notu; Middle English nutte (“use”) from Old English nytt; as well as Old English fricu and Old English sidu.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Adjectives, A Man Called Ove, Word Building

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

useful in the wild

In engineering, a prime mover is an engine that converts chemical energy of a fuel into useful work.
Prime mover (locomotive)
A high-salt diet may also be useful in some people.
Addison's disease
The journal's reference database provides indexes of useful resources.
Living Reviews in Solar Physics
Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued and an alternative term for an economic good or service available for purchase in the market.
Commodity
Many people see the Policy Address as a useful way to predict how the Chief Executive will operate.
Policy Address

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the ūtor family

use

useful — used about once every 253 pages · #2,058 · point at the bar for the others

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