Adjacent Words

Useful definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

U'SEFUL, a. Producing or having power to produce good; beneficial; profitable; helpful towards advancing any purpose; as vessels and instruments useful in a family; books useful for improvement; useful knowledge; useful arts.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: being of use or service; "the girl felt motherly and useful"; "a useful job"; "a useful member of society" [syn: useful, utile] [ant: useless]
2: having a useful function; "utilitarian steel tables" [syn: utilitarian, useful]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1595 1. capable of being put to use; especially serviceable for an end or purpose <useful tools> 2. of a valuable or productive kind <do something useful with your life> • usefully adverb

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 a of use; serviceable. b producing or able to produce good results (gave me some useful hints). 2 colloq. highly creditable or efficient (a useful performance). Phrases and idioms: make oneself useful perform useful services. useful load the load carried by an aircraft etc. in addition to its own weight. Derivatives: usefully adv. usefulness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Useful Use"ful, a. Full of use, advantage, or profit; producing, or having power to produce, good; serviceable for any end or object; helpful toward advancing any purpose; beneficial; profitable; advantageous; as, vessels and instruments useful in a family; books useful for improvement; useful knowledge; useful arts. To what can I useful! --Milton.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. If something is useful, you can use it to do something or to help you in some way. The slow cooker is very useful for people who go out all day... Hypnotherapy can be useful in helping you give up smoking... The police gained a great deal of useful information about the organization. ? useless ADJ • usefully ...the problems to which computers could be usefully applied... We need to find ways of dealing creatively and usefully with our feelings. ADV: ADV with v • usefulness His interest lay in the usefulness of his work, rather than in any personal credit. 2. If an object or skill comes in useful, it can help you achieve something in a particular situation. The accommodation is some distance from the clubhouse, so a hire car comes in useful. PHRASE: V inflects

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Advantageous, profitable, beneficial, serviceable, helpful, available, good, salutary, convenient. 2. Serviceable, helpful, valuable, available.

Moby Thesaurus

advantageous, advisable, agential, agentival, agentive, aidful, appropriate, assisting, auspicious, banausic, becoming, befitting, beneficial, benevolent, bon, bonny, brave, braw, bueno, capital, cogent, commendable, commodious, conducive, congruous, constructive, contributory, convenient, decent, desirable, effective, elegant, employable, estimable, excellent, expedient, facilitating, fair, famous, favorable, favoring, feasible, felicitous, fine, fit, fitten, fitting, forwarding, fructuous, fruitful, functional, furthersome, gainful, good, good for, goodly, grand, handy, happy, healthy, helpful, instrumental, intermediary, kind, laudable, likely, mediating, mediatorial, meet, ministerial, ministering, nice, noble, of general utility, of help, of service, of use, opportune, pleasant, politic, positive, practicable, practical, pragmatical, productive, profitable, promoting, proper, propitious, recommendable, regal, remedial, right, royal, salutary, seasonable, seemly, serviceable, skillful, sortable, sound, splendid, subservient, suitable, therapeutic, timely, to be desired, toward, usable, utilitarian, valid, valuable, very good, virtuous, well-timed, wise, worthwhile