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Bootless Errand

.

An unprofitable or futile message. The Saxon bot means “reparation”—“overplus to profit”; as “I will give you that to boot”; “what boots it me?” (what does it profit me?).

“I sent him

Bootless home and weather-beaten back.”

Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., iii. 1.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.