fruitless

adj

1. Bearing no fruit; barren.

   “[S]he [Rachel Carson] also warned of falls in which "there was no pollination and there would be no fruit." […] The entomologist Stephen L. Buchmann and the crop ecologist Gary Paul Nabhan amplified Carson's warning in their 1996 book, The Forgotten Pollinators. They predicted fruitless falls unless our land-use patterns changed fast. But few people paid attention.”

2. (figuratively)Unproductive, useless.

   “The unskilled man’s attempt at fixing his car engine was fruitless.”

   “Here alſo ſprong that goodly golden fruit, / With which Acontius got his louer trew, / Whom he had long time ſought with fruitleſſe ſuit; […]”

   “[I]f we preſent our ſelues, raſhly and vnaduiſedly, as if we went to a play, or to diſpatch ſome worldly buſineſſe; wee ſhall hardly keepe our minds from negligent wandring and worldly diſtractions, which will make the Word of God fruitleſſe and vnprofitable.”

   “The Ways of Heav’n are dark and intricate, Puzzled in Mazes, and perplext with Errors; Our Underſtanding traces ’em in vain, Loſt and bewilder’d in the fruitleſs Search; […]”

   “[A]t length, after repeated fruitleſs trials, he lay down panting by me, kiſs'd my falling tears, and aſk'd me tenderly, what was the meaning of ſo much complaining, and if I had not born it better from other than I did from him?”

3. (archaic, figuratively)Of a person: unable to have children; barren, infertile.

   “The fruitless woman desperately wanted to have children.”

   “According to that Cabaliſticall Dogma: If Abram had not had this Letter [i.e., ה (he)] added unto his Name he had remained fruitleſſe, and without the power of generation: […] So that being ſterill before, he received the power of generation from that meaſure and manſion in the Archetype; and was made conformable unto Binah.”

4. (rare)Of a diet, etc.: without fruit.

   “The first fruits of the season were eagerly sought after, and everybody was thankful that once more dread winter with its unvarying monotony of fruitless meals was a thing of the past.”

   “Bearing this fact in mind will help dispel the confusion and apparent contradictions that surround us in the field of nutrition—the many individual claims as to the ideal diet, for instance, the high-carbohydrate diet, the milkless diet, the breadless diet, the meatless diet, the fruit diet or the fruitless diet, the high-protein or the low-protein diet, and innumerable variations.”