boondoggle

noun

1. A braided ring to hold a neckerchief.
2. (Canada, US, figuratively, usually)A waste of time or money; a pointless activity.

   “Opponents consider this another billion-dollar government boondoggle.”

   “Senator John Stennis […] has been active and effective for so long as a member of the Armed Services Committee that he knows as well as any man can where the bodies are buried in the Pentagon and the boondoggles are buried in the defense budget.”

   ““Oh, for the-- how much did you waste on that little boondoggle?” “Well, it's not that so much as--” “Krieger.” “Well, I needed ballast, and what better to simulate bricks of cocaine than, you know, bricks of cocaine.””

   “Klein dismantles the boondoggle that is cap and trade.”

   “For cynics, it is a boondoggle plagued by delays (it began in 2007 and was supposed to begin experiments in 2016, but this will not now happen until 2025), questionable management and ballooning costs (double the original estimate).”

3. A trip or journey, especially a recreational or otherwise desirable one.

   “By its strictest definition, a boondoggle is a recreational trip out of town, but it has been blurred by threadbare jokes to mean any trip that is desirable, whether for work or not.”

   “I could die on this boondoggle too, naturally, as the world has become something of a horror show of late. In any case, I trust that anybody following in my footsteps and reading these additional words will have the presence of mind to pursue the same basic strategy.”

4. (slang)A trip or journey, especially a recreational or otherwise desirable one.

   “A non-work excursion away from the station in US Antarctic English is a “boondoggle”, or a “jolly” for the Britons.”

verb

1. (intransitive)To waste time on a pointless activity.

   “These days the astronaut job title has been split into two categories. (Three, counting payload specialist, the category into which teachers, boondoggling senators, and junketing Saudi princes fall.)”