otiose

[ oh-shee-ohs, oh-tee- ]

adjective

1. being at leisure; idle; indolent.

   Synonyms: lazy, slothful

2. ineffective or futile.

   Synonyms: profitless, hollow, vain, ineffectual

3. superfluous or useless.

   Synonyms: pointless, worthless, redundant

otiose

/ -ˌəʊz; ˌəʊtɪˈɒsɪtɪ; ˈəʊtɪˌəʊs /

adjective

1. serving no useful purpose

   otiose language

2. rare.
   indolent; lazy

Derived Forms

• otiosity, noun

Other Words From

• o·ti·ose·ly adverb
• o·ti·os·i·ty [oh-shee-, os, -i-tee, oh-tee-], o·ti·ose·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of otiose¹

First recorded in 1785–95; from Latin ōtiōsus “at leisure, inactive, undisturbed,” equivalent to ōti(um) “leisure, spare time” + -ōsus adjective suffix; -ose ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of otiose¹

C18: from Latin ōtiōsus leisured, from ōtium leisure

Example Sentences

But for Getachew Reda, president of the Tigray interim regional administration, those definitions are otiose.

From BBC

Other times, helped along by the accounts of my Jesuit schoolteachers, I imagined him waiting, otiose and slightly bored—restless, as he had often seemed to be in life—in the long, cosmic queue of Purgatory.

From The New Yorker

Insisting that every branch also have a vault and a cash-handling teller would be otiose, Torstendahl told me, especially given the sharp decline in cash transactions in the past decade.

From The New Yorker

But when Chairman Mao Zedong unleashed his socialist society, dog ownership, like golf or capitalism, was regarded as an otiose affectation.

From Time

A few hundred years later, the Italian natural historian Ulysse Aldrovandi wrote briefly on the matter, revealing that the question was well-known but settled in the year 1600: “I pass over now that trite and thus otiose rather than curious question, whether the hen exists before the egg or vice versa. It is stated in the sacred books that the hen existed first. These books teach that animals were created at the beginning of the world; hence the hen did not come from the egg but from nothing.”

From Time