futilis

Futilis is a Latin adjective meaning futile, useless, or ineffective. In scholarly writing and in the naming conventions of biology, futilis is most often found as a species epithet rather than as a standalone genus name. There is no widely recognized taxon that uses Futilis as a genus; instead, futilis appears across multiple genera as part of the binomial name of individual species.

Etymology and use in taxonomy: The epithet futilis reflects a historical judgment about a particular characteristic or trait of a species at the time of its description. Such assessments can be subjective and may be revised with new information or methods. Because Latin adjectival epithets are gendered to agree with the genus, futilis is used in its masculine form when paired with masculine or masculine-feminine genus names, and its form may change to agree with the genus in other grammatical contexts.

In modern practice, futilis is treated as a descriptive epithet within the framework of binomial nomenclature, and it is typically italicized as part of the species name. When used in ordinary prose, it is not capitalized and is not set off by quotation marks.

Beyond taxonomy, the term appears in discussions of Latin linguistic heritage and the study of how descriptive terms are deployed in scientific naming. The word’s surface meaning—useless or futile—colors both historical naming choices and contemporary reflections on how scientists describe organisms.