nugatory

This is one of those words that sounds as though it ought to be doing something grand, but instead it’s loafing around in a bathrobe. In Latin, nugæ were just trifles and jokes, and from that came nugari, “to play the fool,” which then produced nugatorius, the adjective behind our English word. By the time English writers were using it around 1600, they had a neat way to dismiss an argument, a promise, or a scheme as basically empty pocket lint. The root’s family is delightfully unserious: it doesn’t link to some heroic idea of power or truth, just to the ancient human talent for wasting everyone’s time. If a plan is nugatory, it isn’t merely weak — it’s the verbal equivalent of a magician’s cape pulled back to reveal nothing at all.