What's the difference between pointless and purposeless?

Pointless


Definition:

  • (a.) Having no point; blunt; wanting keenness; obtuse; as, a pointless sword; a pointless remark.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The citizenship debate is tawdry, conflated and ultimately pointless | Richard Ackland Read more On Wednesday, the prime minister criticised lawyers for backing terrorists.
  • (2) It’s the same story over and over.” Children’s author Philip Ardagh , who told the room he once worked as an “unprofessional librarian” in Lewisham, said: “Closing down a library is like filing off the end of a swordfish’s nose: pointless.” 'Speak up before there's nothing left': authors rally for National Libraries Day Read more “Today proves that support for public libraries comes from all walks of life and it’s not rocket science to work out why.
  • (3) But now the document turns crazily surreal, like the pointless war itself.
  • (4) And David Ngog was a pointless signing too – one which puzzled us all.
  • (5) "It is pointless to think sovereign bond rates could be brought down for an extended period of time by outside interventions," said Draghi.
  • (6) They aren't pointless; apart from any craft they may teach, they can also offer connections and contacts – a "way in" – which is the modern essential of anyone trying to start a career.
  • (7) An Australian family that lost three children and a grandfather in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 has published an emotional tribute calling for an end to the “pointless war” in eastern Ukraine.
  • (8) People are criticising what we are doing as pointless and saying we won’t achieve anything, but history has shown us that is not the case,” student leader Joshua Wong told the crowd last week.
  • (9) It is pointless to go back over the missed opportunities, but an essential part of the design of this regional conference is that it should be able to be supported by Russia and China as well as the US.
  • (10) Hoodies don't vote, they've realised it's pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the "we don't give a toss about you" party.
  • (11) Bojórquez, the editor, says that for the moment the risks are manageable within his commitment to the idea that journalism is pointless unless it informs.
  • (12) The others are either infuriatingly vague (“An NHS with time to care”) or pointlessly catch-all (“A country where the next generation can do better than the last”).
  • (13) Especially when there’s no funeral to go to, just an endless stream of pointless review meetings.
  • (14) "If this doesn't bring down mortgage rates for 95% loans then the whole thing is completely pointless," he said.
  • (15) To express guarded optimism about the Greek deal is not to condone the provocative arrogance of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis or the pointless vindictiveness of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble .
  • (16) The PCC came under fire last week from the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, who branded its report on phone hacking at the News of the World "worse than pointless".
  • (17) 3 Don’t be afraid to talk about corruption Poverty overseas is often associated with corruption: 67% of the British public think that government corruption makes donating to reduce poverty “pointless” (up from 48% in 2008), according to research from Jennifer and David Hudson.
  • (18) But it's a pointless endeavour if the fundraising activity contributes to and compounds the culture in which our breasts are only relevant if they're being admired by someone else's eyes.
  • (19) Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art.
  • (20) Why should Paris or Berlin waste political capital - they have suspicious voters too - on concessions to Britain when it may all be pointless?

Purposeless


Definition:

  • (a.) Having no purpose or result; objectless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Continuous administration of haloperidol, sulpiride, or cis-flupenthixol, but not of domperidone or apomorphine, to Wistar rats for up to 3 weeks caused an increase in spontaneous purposeless chewing movements.
  • (2) Best of all was the technic Lego, the gears and axles and motors that formed the guts of fantastical machines, frequently purposeless but endlessly fascinating.
  • (3) They avoid eye contact, show no interest in people, express little emotion, and repeat stereotypic movements such as head nodding and purposeless finger manipulation.
  • (4) The operative results in idiopathic cases are poor; it seems to be purposeless to operate patients who have a paresis for a long time.
  • (5) The ESC said the decision to air the series of jokes was a "regrettable lapse of editorial judgment" and that programme-makers "need to be aware that audiences may find casual or purposeless stereotypes to be offensive".
  • (6) It asked about "purposeless habits," defined as those "repeated actions that appear to serve no useful purpose but that we continue to engage in anyway."
  • (7) Tics are purposeless and repetitive involuntary movements and vocalizations with variable and complex means of expression.
  • (8) At the onset of purposeless, unco-ordinated movements of the entire body, blood samples were obtained to determine the CNS excitation-threshold plasma concentration (ETPC) of laudanosine.
  • (9) These data support the role of 5-HT receptors in the mediation of purposeless chewing behaviour and suggest an interaction between brain 5-HT and acetylcholine systems.
  • (10) He criticises it for not having an aircraft carrier in operation, despite the two costly and purposeless ones on order.
  • (11) Single administration of D-2 dopamine agonist bromocriptine also showed a slight but significant purposeless chewing, which was decreased by sulpiride pretreatment.
  • (12) They recommended that the earliest surgical intervention be accorded patients with intermittent exotropia of 20 delta and over, instead of purposeless waiting and observation.
  • (13) Psychoanalysis does not predict outcome as required by philosophical determinism, but traces it backwards to find that it is meaningful, and not arbitrary or purposeless.
  • (14) Contrary to previous reports, acute manipulation of D-1 or D-2 receptor function can both enhance purposeless chewing behaviour in rats.
  • (15) The new towns of the postwar period were also infected by Unwinism and were built to unsustainably low densities, with land being wasted in over-large plots and purposeless areas of open space.
  • (16) Pericyazine provided significant improvement in such parameters as co-operation, temper, purposeless activities, hyperactivity, communication and mood.
  • (17) Cholinomimetic drugs are known to induce changes in perioral behavior in rodents, characterized primarily by "purposeless" chewing movements, but little is known about their central sites of action.
  • (18) The dogs had excitement and purposeless muscle movements during recovery from anesthesia.
  • (19) There was something particularly purposeless about the year they gave the award to the Arctic Monkeys' debut album, not because Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not wasn't good, but because everyone was already abundantly aware that it was: it had sold 360,000 copies in the week it was released alone.
  • (20) The results suggest that two additional factors that did not differ between specialties require further examination, namely patient behaviour and purposelessness of nursing care.

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