| 释义 |
ineffectual, a.|ɪnɪˈfɛktjʊəl|
[f. in-3 + effectual: perh. from a med.L. or OF. corresp. form.]
a. Not effectual. Of efforts, attempts, or actions: Without effect; unable to produce the intended effect; unavailing, unsuccessful, fruitless.
c1425Foundat. St. Bartholomew's (E.E.T.S.) 10 Yneffectualle these prayers myght nat be, whoes auctor ys the Apostle, whois gracyous herer was God. 1631Gouge God's Arrows iii. §21. 220 We observe meanes to be wanting or to be ineffectuall. 1665Boyle Occas. Refl. Ded., Your Commands can Prevail..where those of Others would have been wholly Ineffectual. a1704T. Brown Satire Antients Wks. 1730 I. 25 All his efforts were ineffectual. 1790Gibbon Misc. Wks. (1814) V. 173 The title was vain, the grant ineffectual. 1821J. Q. Adams in C. Davies Metr. Syst. iii. (1871) 85 In England..the statute-books are filled with ineffectual attempts of the legislature to establish uniformity. 1841Brewster Mart. Sc. i. (1856) 7 When he found his reasoning ineffectual, he appealed to direct experiment.
b. Of things: Not producing the usual or expected effect; weak or tame in effect. (Often in allusions to Shakespeare's ‘uneffectual fire’, Ham. i. v. 90.)
1784Cowper Task v. 7 His [the sun's] slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale. 1856Kane Arct. Expl. I. xxxii. 451 The phosphorescence was not unlike the ineffectual fire of the glow-worm. 1856Mrs. Browning Aur. Leigh ii. (1857) 76, I..there confronted at my chamber-door, A white face,—shivering, ineffectual lips. 1876Ouida Winter City v. 95 She smiled a little, and let the cigarette pale its ineffectual fire and die out.
c. Of a person: That does not effect the ends for which he exists; that is a failure. Also as n.
1865M. Arnold Ess. Crit. iii. (1875) 124 The passive and ineffectual Uranus of Keats's poem. 1896Mrs. Caffyn Quaker Grandmother 142 In everything she had become ineffectual. Work had lost its savour, prayer its creative atmosphere. 1897T. Hodgkin Chas. Gt. 90 Pope Stephen III., the Sicilian, a weak and ineffectual man. 1925G. Greene Babbling April 4 You snobbish intellectual, Suburban ineffectual, Can't you feel that shimmy in the air? |