Definition of "bootless" [boot•less]

• Without advantage or benefit; useless. See Synonyms at futile. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If their forays were bootless, in the nature of things their forays would cease."
• "Yet to sojourn in San Antonio unherbed was to set off under the searing sun naked, scalped, and bootless across some scree of burning rock straight out of Cormac McCarthy."
• "Hitchens gave short shrift to the "insulting" suggestion that cancer might persuade him to change his position where reason had not, arguing that to ditch principles "held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favour at the last minute" would be a "hucksterish choice", and urging those who had taken it upon themselves to pray for him not to "trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries"."