adjective
definition
Having a practical or beneficial use.
synonyms
Examples of useful in a Sentence
He has a useful gift.
For someone who needs more power, it's a very useful talent.
She was useful for now.
He was the bravest and most useful man in the party.
She spins, and does a great deal of fancy work, and reads, and leads a pleasant, useful life.
This will be extremely useful, because the game, as they say, has just changed completely.
Gimme a ring if you have anything useful to say.
We play a little game which I find most useful in developing the intellect, and which incidentally answers the purpose of a language lesson.
Dean found nothing useful until he looked in the trash.
Perhaps I may prove useful to your Serene Highness.
But, above all, that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in fact they were to the whole Rostov family.
Pierre still considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it.
If we can open him up, I think he'll be useful.
Hyphear is useful for fattening cattle if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative effect it produces at first; viscum is medicinally of value as an emollient, and in cases of tumour, ulcers and the like.
He was also well known as a sanitary reformer, and during the last ten years of his life he did much useful work in inculcating more enlightened ideas on the subject both in Edinburgh and other places.
She was early regarded as a useful medium for contracting an alliance with England, more necessary than ever to Portugal after the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 whereby Portugal was ostensibly abandoned by France.
In Britain the evergreen oak is quite hardy in ordinary winters, and is useful to the ornamental planter from its capacity for resisting the sea gales; but it generally remains of small size.
It carried their baggage and was useful to ride in wherever there were good roads, and since it had accompanied them so far in their travels they felt it their duty to preserve it.
Probably a sphere would prove most useful for a pressure anemometer, since owing to its symmetrical shape it would not require a weathercock.
He was an enthusiastic and most useful leader of the volunteer movement from its beginning, and a writer, composer and singer of humorous and patriotic songs, some of which, as "The Three Foot Rule" and "They never shall have Gibraltar," became well known far beyond the circle of his acquaintance.
Every portion, from its roots to its leaves, serves some useful purpose.
I am totally ignorant in every part of useful knowledge.
It is quite possible that the characters of the nematocysts might afford data as useful to the systematist in this group as do the spicules of sponges, for instance.
If the new characters be useful, they are selected and perfected in.
Notwithstanding this prospective loss of revenue, parliament showed great reluctance to vote any new impost, although hardly a year previously it had sanctioned (3oth June 1879) Depretiss scheme for spending during the next eighteen years 43,200,000 in building 5000 kilometres of railway, an expenditure not wholly justified by the importance of the lines, and useful principally as a source of electoral sops for the constituents of ministerial deputies.
After a highly useful career, under the presidency till 1813 of Sir John Sinclair, the Board of Agriculture was dissolved in 1819, but left in its statistical account, county surveys and other documents much interesting and valuable information regarding the agriculture of the period.
Useful figures for purposes of comparison are obtained by dividing the weight of a fat beast by the number of days in its age, the weight at birth being thrown in.
Mill could now feel that his main work was accomplished; he remained, however, on the alert for opportunities of useful influence, and pressed on with hardly diminished enthusiasm in his search for useful truth.
Besides his commercial value to Cromwell, Carvajal was politically useful also, for he acted as "intelligencer."
Palacky's Geschichte Btihmens (1864-1867) is also very useful.
He also made some useful contributions to religious history.
A lotion of sodium bicarbonate is useful to allay itching.
At one time they were supposed to be useful as a vermifuge.
The birch is one of the most wide-spread and generally useful of forest trees of Russia, occurring in that empire in vast forests, in many instances alone, and in other cases mingled with pines, poplars and other forest trees.
As yet, however, the medusa of Microhydra has only been seen in an immature condition, but it shows some well-marked differences from Limnocodium, especially in the structure of the tentacles, which furnish useful characters for distinguishing species amongst medusae.
For it is almost impossible to prove that any structure, however rudimentary, is useless - that is to say, that it plays no part whatever in the economy; and, if it is in the slightest degree useful, there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created.
Outside his judicial duties he was responsible for much useful public work, particularly in the department of higher education.
P. canadensis, the "cotton-wood" of the western prairies, and its varieties are perhaps the most useful trees of the genus, often forming almost the only arborescent vegetation on the great American plains.
The society has also established a chemical research laboratory, in which much useful work has been done in connexion with the national pharmacopoeia under the direction of the Pharmacopoeia Committee of the Medical Council.
All the surviving forms, however, have a completely established double system with the specific characters alluded to, and since there is every reason to believe that the conditions of evolution of the primitive Pteridophyte must have been essentially similar to those of the Bryophytes, the various stages in the evolution of the conducting system of the latter (p. 732) are very useful to compare with the arrangements met with in the former.
However, the terms are incapable of exact definition, and are only useful when used in a very general way.
We find the ultimate explanation of this in the facts that all organisms vary, and that their variations are inherited and, if useful, perpetuated.
The great and splendidly illustrated collections of voyages and travels of Theodorus de Bry and Hulsius served a similar useful purpose on the continent of Europe.
The action of the society in supplying practical instruction to intending travellers, in astronomy, surveying and the various branches of science useful to collectors, has had much to do with advancement of discovery.
It combines with many metals to form sulphides, and also decomposes many metallic salts with consequent production of sulphides, a property which renders it extremely useful in chemical analysis.
Peter had endeavoured to import from western Europe the essentials of good government and such of the useful arts as were required for the development of the natural resources of the country; Catherine did likewise, but she did not restrict herself to purely utilitarian aims in the narrower sense of the term.
As was suggested at the outset, railway accident statistics are useful only as showing how to make life and limb safer, though in pursuing this object increased economy should also be secured.
Useful compulsory laws regarding the details of train management are difficult to frame and hard to carry out; but the Board has exercised a persistent persuasiveness and has secured most of its objects.
A majority of the states have railway commissions, but the investigation of railway accidents, with comparatively few exceptions, has not been done in such a way as to make the results useful in promoting improved practice.
These are useful so far as they go, but they lack the impartiality that would be secured by an inquiry such as is held in England.