What's the difference between barren and fruitless?

Barren


Definition:

  • (a.) Incapable of producing offspring; producing no young; sterile; -- said of women and female animals.
  • (a.) Not producing vegetation, or useful vegetation; /rile.
  • (a.) Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty.
  • (a.) Mentally dull; stupid.
  • (n.) A tract of barren land.
  • (n.) Elevated lands or plains on which grow small trees, but not timber; as, pine barrens; oak barrens. They are not necessarily sterile, and are often fertile.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Blueberry barrens stretch over several acres in Wesley, Maine.
  • (2) During a year of residence in the essentially allergen-free, barren environment of Antarctica, allergic subjects were entirely sypmtom-free.
  • (3) Mean calving to conception intervals were 91.4 and 85.3 days (P < 0.01) and the incidence of barren cows was 10.2 and 5.3% (NS).
  • (4) Nobody is sure what dangerous chemical imbalance this would create but the Fiver is convinced we'd all be dust come October or November, the earth scorched, with only three survivors roaming o'er the barren landscape: Govan's answer to King Lear, ranting into a hole in the ground; a mute, wild-eyed pundit, staring without blinking into a hole in the ground; and a tall, irritable figure standing in front of the pair of them, screaming in the style popularised by Klaus Kinski, demanding they take a look at his goddamn trouser arrangement, which he has balanced here on the platform of his hand for easy perusal, or to hell with them, for they are no better than pigs, worthless, spineless pigs.
  • (5) BBC footage showed Tebbutt wearing a green headscarf running towards a plane in a flat, barren landscape.
  • (6) Forced removals and dumping of millions of people into small, disconnected, barren, poor reserve areas, bereft of adequate medical, psychiatric and public health services (the 'final solution' of the 'native problem') causes widespread malnutrition, infectious and other diseases, and high mortality and mental-illness rates.
  • (7) There is no difference in the cyclicity of indices studied between pregnant and barren mares.
  • (8) Many cities have a history of hosting refugees; indeed, the typical image of a refugee dwelling – straight rows of nondescript tents set up on barren, faraway lands – is misleading.
  • (9) There were three groups: pregnant (P) ewes (n = 6) which each reared twin lambs, hormone-treated (H) ewes (n = 7) which were not pregnant and were given exogenous hormones (dexamethasone, oestradiol-17 beta, progesterone) for 37 days to induce udder development and milk production, and untreated barren (B) ewes (n = 6).
  • (10) Last year, Icelandic authorities rejected a Chinese billionaire's bid to turn land in the country's barren north into a holiday resort .
  • (11) It’s in these barren parts that the Edwards air force base is located, where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time, and where the test pilots celebrated in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff proved their mettle before going on to become America’s first astronauts.
  • (12) I grit my teeth as the trees hunker down smaller and smaller, then finally give up entirely, leaving us alone in a barren upland area where there is one large grey house partially obscured by torn curtains of freezing rain.
  • (13) 9 of 30 camels which were barren for a long period were found to be positive for C. fetus.
  • (14) Between 1982 and 1985, 1015 mares were evaluated using the following parameters: age, mare status (maiden, barren, lactating), Caslick index, Caslick operation, ovarian cycle, ovarian and follicular size, treatments (hCG and intrauterine infusions), number of ovulations after mating (184 mares), number of conceptuses present, dimensions of embryonic vesicles, and pregnancy status 45 days after mating.
  • (15) In 2007 the conservative senator, Bill Heffernan, accused the prime minister, then in opposition, of being unfit for leadership because she was "deliberately barren".
  • (16) All dogs from which necropsy samples were obtained harbored low numbers of adult female worms, some of which were barren.
  • (17) And no wonder, so seductively dystopian is its premise: that a species can be eradicated by altering the genetic code of males in captivity so that they will only be able to produce sterile offspring, then releasing them into the wild to mate with unsuspecting females, rendering the next generation barren.
  • (18) To analyse the junction point between the expression site and the inserted gene, these two barren regions were cloned and sequenced.
  • (19) He looks down dismissively at the guilty patch of barren earth.
  • (20) The presence of the nuclear plant is a beacon of employment in an otherwise barren jobs landscape.

Fruitless


Definition:

  • (a.) Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.
  • (a.) Productive of no advantage or good effect; vain; idle; useless; unprofitable; as, a fruitless attempt; a fruitless controversy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is generally agreed upon that ERT is fruitless in the patient with severe head trauma or when vital signs were absent at the scene of the injury.
  • (2) Gone would be the system of semi-competition, of backroom bundles that force you to pay for channels and programming you wouldn't watch – even if it was the only thing available, like when you turn off the TV after a long, fruitless Netflix scroll.
  • (3) Her support dissipated in a fruitless search for a site.
  • (4) Both sides, wearied by decades of fruitless diplomacy, cautioned that an initial meeting – scheduled for the "next week or so" in Washington, according to Kerry – will not automatically lead to productive negotiations.
  • (5) That will not be the case this week when trade ministers from 159 countries meet in Bali in the hopes of salvaging something from 12 years of so far fruitless talks.
  • (6) Once when I was fruitlessly engaged on this bag non-opening, someone came up to me, and I barked: “I can do it myself thank you.” He was just collecting the umbrella he’d left behind.
  • (7) "Gnnmph, I can't 'ave it 'ere, I 'aven't 'ad my enema," wails a labouring housewife, straining fruitlessly on a communal tenement bog as horrified neighbours look on in their rollers.
  • (8) We seem to spend time protesting loudly and fruitlessly about the actions of our enemies – whom we are actually unable to influence – while standing by as our so-called “friends” get away with officially sanctioned crimes, torture and injustice.
  • (9) Smears made from purulent discharges do not always show the organism and microbiological culture may likewise prove fruitless.
  • (10) Duped by Mexico’s mafia: Guatemalan couple fall victim to border gang Read more After four years of fruitless appeals she entered the church on 7 August to escape a final deportation order that took effect the following day.
  • (11) But I can help you.” “We can help you shave off a couple years of fruitless effort,” Susie added.
  • (12) In a statement that contained little contrition for putting investors, staff and customers through a fruitless two weeks, Duch-Pedersen insisted that shareholders were continuing to "express their overwhelming support for the standalone G4S business and its management".
  • (13) Efforts at reducing demand have been similarly fruitless.
  • (14) The project faces huge opposition from Greenpeace and other environmental groups that hoped the company would end its search for oil, which has so far been fruitless.
  • (15) The petitions, banners, town hall meetings and political visits proved to be fruitless.
  • (16) To date fruitless efforts have been carried out to find a cryoprotectant for the spermatozoa membranes and glycerol still continues to be used despite its harmful effects to the membranes.
  • (17) And I sort of thought I'd bought my freedom in that way") and hitchhiked through Europe, looking, fruitlessly, for an idea of what to do.
  • (18) He said there had been “more than 300 violations” of the truce since last weekend, when it was supposed to begin, and warned that the EU is “reaching a point when further diplomatic efforts will be fruitless unless credibly backed up by further action”.
  • (19) A 41-year-old man suffering from an actinomyces infection of the cornea of his right eye, was treated unsuccessfully with antibiotics especially intensive local and systematic therapy with penicillin, paracentesis of the anterior chamber with penicillin irrigation, and cautery of the corneal ulcer were fruitless.
  • (20) Much of the money has been squandered on a fruitless search for cancer "cures."

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