What's the difference between futile and sisyphean?
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.
Sisyphean
Definition:
(a.) Relating to Sisyphus; incessantly recurring; as, Sisyphean labors.
Example Sentences:
(1) Gnod sound as much like Steppenwolf as they do the Stooges, as much like a cult as they do a biker gang, and there is, we've decided, a deliberate use of repetition to denote the Sisyphean nature of existence.
(2) Even if the company laboured under financial constraints that sometimes made getting the paper out each night seem like a Sisyphean miracle, I could never really regret them, selfishly speaking: I had nothing more lavish with which to compare the circumstances, and if things hadn’t been so straitened I never would have had a shot at the comical series of overpromotions that defined my time there.
(3) People are trying to defend their land by planting mangroves, and Sisyphean sea walls are built and rebuilt.
(4) The "rediscovery" of these principles has spawned an industry unto itself and in this event pathology is in danger of entangling itself in an expensive, parallel (not integral) process that may be Sisyphean.
(5) Memories of the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks create fears that the challenge is a doomed, repetitive, Sisyphean labour.
(6) Sisyphean.” Brand says it is a misconception that druggies have no drive.
(7) The country faced a Sisyphean task, said one, namechecking the king of Corinth who was condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to see it bounce down again, then repeat the task for eternity.
(8) To attempt to build a model of China’s 22-million strong capital is a Sisyphean endeavour.
(9) Weir has set himself a Sisyphean schedule at these Games.
(10) The pod’s sensory apparatus is linked up to a Macbook Pro in the back, which over three years will create 3D maps of its Sisyphean journey along the pavement between Milton Keynes railway station and the shopping centre.
(11) Since journals will apparently continue to be published on paper, it is folly to persist in the use of acidic paper and thus magnify for future librarians and preservationists the already Sisyphean and costly task of deacidifying their collections.
(12) The British commanders made matters worse by spreading their troops across several small outposts along the valley, condemning them to a Sisyphean mission: they would clear insurgents from small parts of the district, but then they had to move on.
(13) Even as a city's forms of transport empower us, they limit us, reducing us to a narrow set of obsessions: New Yorkers' compulsive but futile questions about when the train will come; Angelenos' sad, Sisyphean quest for free parking; Copenhageners' budgeting for their next bicycle when their current one inevitably gets stolen; Londoners' ceaseless insistence that the whole of their infrastructure lies more or less in ruins.
(14) It is a Sisyphean task, but our best options may look like this: Better sex education.