Worthless, worthless, worthless

It has been a while since I didn’t have something to follow up on, so today it’s writer’s choice. And today, three words for worthless. It’s always nice to have good words to call someone that may actually sound like a compliment. Gimcrack has an element of showiness that nugatory doesn't, and otiose is more about leisure than uselessness. My favorite of the three to use in referring to someone else is gimcrack because it sounds like a compliment; my favorite in referring to myself is otiose.

Gimcrack as a noun means a showy or useless trifle. The synonym provided is gewgaw, which doesn’t help if you’re not familiar with that word. The adjective form means showy but useless. It originally (in the 1610s) simply meant a showy person (think Liberace or Elton John or Lady Gaga, depending on your generation), but by 1839 had come to refer to any showy trifle that has no use. Its etymology is uncertain, but could have come from furniture making. In the mid-1300s a kind of ornament on furniture was given the name gibecrake, which may have come from the combination of the Old French word for rattle or shake, giber, and the Middle English word for a sharp noise crak. Or not. At any rate, it’s a short jump from an ornamental but useless feature on furniture to an ornamental but useless feature sitting on furniture. There is an element of showiness to this that isn’t present in the word nugatory.

A more familiar word that may have developed from gimcrack is gimmick. In 1926 it was defined in Maine and Grant’s Wise-Crack Dictionary  as “a device for making a fair game crooked.” Gimmick is an American English word, and may have been a form or gimcrack or an anagram of magic (gimac). Take your pick.

Nugatory is an adjective that refers to anything that has no value, effect, or validity. Not negative, but not positive either. It came to English about 1600 from the Latin word nugatorius, which means worthless, trifling, or futile. It is a form of the word nugator that refers to a jester or a braggart  and is a form of the Latin word for joke: nugae.

Today’s third word is otiose. (Not to be confused with odious, the adjective form of odium.) Otiose first appeared in 1794, and it is just coincidence that 1794 was five years after congress was first formed. Otiose comes from the Latin word otiosus, meaning “having leisure or ease, unoccupied, idle, not busy.” It is a good word for being at leisure or not having to do anything. I think I will call my retirement home otium cum dignitate, which is translated leisure with dignity.

But I don’t yet have my retirement home or ornamental furniture to put in it. As Gershwin didn’t put it in his great American opera Porgy and Bess: I got plenty of nugatory stuff.