What's the difference between feckless and futile?

Feckless


Definition:

  • (a.) Spiritless; weak; worthless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The euro elite insists it is representing the interests of Portuguese or Irish taxpayers who have to pick up the bill for bailing out the feckless Greeks – or will be enraged by any debt forgiveness when they have been forced to swallow similar medicine.
  • (2) In February last year the BBC was forced to apologise to the Mexican ambassador after a joke made by the three presenters that the nation's cars were like the people "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".
  • (3) Feckless Tom Bertram is a haunter of seaside resorts.
  • (4) The right is very flexible on industrial action: in the 80s striking miners were characterised as violent and feckless, despite being unarmed against mounted police and arguably the opposite of feckless – battling to keep backbreaking jobs.
  • (5) Feckless in all other respects, Richard feels protective towards Walter, which is why he won't sleep with Patty.
  • (6) The targets of Karzai's often intemperate outbursts were equally frustrated, dubbing the president "feckless" and "unreliable", briefing that he was "paranoid" and possibly abusing prescription drugs.
  • (7) Rayner later said of her parents that "they were very young and very feckless".
  • (8) The problem, however, of grand multipara who are feckless, ignorant and of low social class, still remains.
  • (9) That the EU is seeking greater powers to steal the money of rich nations to deal with the feckless Spanish and Greeks.
  • (10) It’s not as easy for them as cutting benefits, which could simply be depicted as taking candy from obese babies and their feckless mothers.
  • (11) And on tax and capitalism in general, public opinion is, if anything, moving leftwards, as tax cheats and feckless bankers solidify into popular demons.
  • (12) Jesse James, a cold-blooded killer, lived a simple life: he murdered people, he robbed banks, he got shot in the back by feckless confederates, he died.
  • (13) The BBC has upheld complaints against Top Gear over Richard Hammond's comments that Mexicans are "lazy, feckless [and] flatulent".
  • (14) The bromance sub-genre suggests a perpendicular solution to similar issues: friendship replaces sex, and in the sharp Role Models , bromantically involved Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott also form surrogate parental bonds with feckless males-in-training Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb'e J Thompson .
  • (15) Their analysis – that the problem is worklessness – is wrong; their assumptions – that the poor are feckless – are wrong.
  • (16) He said: "It is utterly shocking and I hope that the ministers will take note of this and get hold of some of these feckless fathers, drag them off, put them in chains if necessary, make them work and make them pay back society for the cost of bringing up the children they chose to bring into this world."
  • (17) It was a stern lecture, naturally, but nothing like the old days when a performance that feckless would have seen a wedding set's worth of­ ­crockery smashed against the dressing-room walls.
  • (18) Clarkson previously maligning Mexicans as "lazy, feckless and flatulent", or making jokes about "black Muslim lesbians", or Sterling twice being fined by the department of justice for being a racist slumlord, didn't quite cut it.
  • (19) When Scotsman Harry Stanley was killed by police in the same year after leaving a London pub carrying a table leg and being mistaken for an Irishman with a sawn-off shotgun he was demonised as a feckless drunk.
  • (20) Coalitions involve compromises, but it is a shameful moment to see Britain's most pro-European party, and pro-European Tories such as Kenneth Clarke, trooping into the lobbies tonight in support of such a foolish, feckless and futile bill.

Futile


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Talkative; loquacious; tattling.
  • (v. t.) Of no importance; answering no useful end; useless; vain; worthless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is suggested the participation of glycogen (starch) in the self-oscillatory mechanism of the futile cycle formed by the phosphofructokinase and fructose bisphosphatase reactions may give rise to oscillations with the period of 10(3)-10(4) min, which may serve as the basis for the cell clock.
  • (2) It also appears that she would have been one of those behind the government's futile attempts to oppose restrictions on neonicotinoids.
  • (3) Every time he felt the futility of his work for the NAACP, he’d finger the well-worn pages, and it would strengthen his resolve.” This is how classics of this calibre work their way into the literary bloodstream.
  • (4) Representing the Sun in the second hearing, Richard Spearman QC told the court that keeping the privacy injunction in place was futile.
  • (5) We propose that when rationing criteria refer to medical benefit, the meanings of futility and rationing share certain common features.
  • (6) So we have futile rhetoric on immigration, but minimal discussion over how to reinvent politics in the digital age.
  • (7) Last week’s International Women’s Day offered a fresh variation on that enjoyable, if futile, new pastime – posthumous EU partisanship.
  • (8) Inhibition of this futile cycling may represent one avenue by which energetic costs of maintenance and production can be lowered in ruminants.
  • (9) We postulated that the high-affinity potassium uptake system was able to generate such a steep gradient across the membrane that the low-affinity system would act in reverse, thus creating a futile cycle of potassium ions at the cost of energy.
  • (10) Zuckerberg has long been courting China’s leaders in a so far futile attempt to access the country with the world’s largest number of Internet users — 668 million as of last year.
  • (11) In 1986, while serving as prime minister and foreign minister, Peres held negotiations that led to the London agreement, the ultimately futile peace accord that included Israeli-Jordanian cooperation in administrating the West Bank.
  • (12) Futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may prevent humane care of the dying child and deprive parents of the opportunity to express their love, grief, and dedication at a critical moment, while appropriate and successful CPR may restore intact their child.
  • (13) Of the 8 women who had futile laparotomies, 4 had unilateral salpingectomy and a contralateral Pomeroy ligation, but insufficient tube remained for reversal; 2 others had single-burn cautery, but had insufficient tube length, and the Pomeroy procedures in 2 others left insufficient distal tissue.
  • (14) Furthermore, addition of low concentrations of PAPS (0.5 microM) to a reconstituted system of microsomes and cytosol impaired the formation of fluorescent product from 4-methylumbelliferyl sulfate until PAPS was consumed, indicating that futile cycling via arylsulfatase and sulfotransferase occurred.
  • (15) However, the early stages are often missed or lead to futile diagnostic endeavours.
  • (16) Ignoring personal ghosts, or those of an entire country traumatised by war and genocide, is futile and even dangerous.
  • (17) Rationing, triage, and medical futility in relation to AIDS patients require careful deliberation and consideration.
  • (18) It’s idealistic, it’s the right thing to do even if it turns out to be utterly futile.
  • (19) These unusual kinetic properties may be of significance with regard to the regulation of ornithine transcarbamylase in this organism, especially in the avoidance of a futile ornithine cycle.
  • (20) Iceland This strange and beautiful country is now as flooded with satellite trash as everywhere else, but is listed in the futile hope that the suppression it once practised might be revived.