what's the use in English

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{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "what's the use",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "What's the use trying to tell him? He won't listen."
        },
        {
          "text": "What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to indicate that a specified or implied action cannot succeed or offers no advantage if successful"
      ],
      "id": "en-what's_the_use-en-phrase-NJ2bAdpL",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial, often with a following present participle or infinitive expression) Used to indicate that a specified or implied action cannot succeed or offers no advantage if successful"
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "there's no use"
        },
        {
          "word": "no use"
        },
        {
          "word": "it's no use"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "often",
        "with a following present participle or infinitive expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's the use"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "what's the use",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "there's no use"
    },
    {
      "word": "no use"
    },
    {
      "word": "it's no use"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "What's the use trying to tell him? He won't listen."
        },
        {
          "text": "What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to indicate that a specified or implied action cannot succeed or offers no advantage if successful"
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial, often with a following present participle or infinitive expression) Used to indicate that a specified or implied action cannot succeed or offers no advantage if successful"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "often",
        "with a following present participle or infinitive expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's the use"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"what's the use" meaning in English

Phrase