In a word: Nugatory

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

NUGATORY

Nothing to do with nougat. Nothing to do with anything significant or important, either.

The word (pronounced NOO-guh-tor-ee) means trifling, of no importance or value, ineffectual, useless, futile.

It is an anglicization of the late Latin

nugatorius

, which derives from

nugari

, "to trifle," and

nugae

, "jests."

Example:

From Evelyn Waugh's

The Loved One

: "Mr. Joyboy was not a handsome man. … But these physical defects were nugatory when set against his moral earnestness and the compelling charm of his softly resonant voice."