different between workless vs wordless

English

Etymology

work +? -less

Adjective

workless (not comparable)

1. Devoid of work.
   • 1935, Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains (U.S. title: The Last of Mr Norris), Chapter Eight, in The Berlin Stories, New York: New Directions, 1963, p. 87,^[1]

     And morning after morning, all over the immense, damp, dreary town and the packing-case colonies of huts in the suburb allotments, young men were waking up to another workless empty day to be spent as they could best contrive […]

2. Having no work to do; unemployed.
   • 1516, Sir Thomas More, Utopia

     The number of workless swelled to terrible dimensions

   • 2007, Helping people from workless households into work (published by the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom)

     A workless household is defined as a household that includes at least one person of working-age (men aged 16-64 years and women aged 16-59 years) where no one in the household aged 16 or over is in employment.

3. (obsolete) Not carried out in practice; not exemplified in fact.

Quotations

• 2002, Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, Kinetics of human motion, page 462

  Hence, workless forces are also powerless forces.

English

Etymology

From Middle English wordles, equivalent to word +? -less. Compare Dutch woordeloos (“speechless, inexpressible in words”), German wortlos (“silent, speechless”), Danish ordløs (“wordless”), Swedish ordlös (“wordless”), Icelandic orðlaus (“wordless, speechless”).

Adjective

wordless (comparative more wordless, superlative most wordless)

1. Conveyed without the use of words; unspoken or unsaid.
2. Unable or unwilling to speak; dumb, silent or inarticulate.

   Synonym: speechless

Antonyms

• wordful

Translations