sisyphean

1. alternativenot comparableAlternative form of Sisyphean.

alternative Sisyphusean · alternative sisyphean · alternative Sisyphian · alternative Sysyphean · alternative Sisyphic · alternative sisyphic · alternative sisiphic

1. not comparableIncessant or incessantly recurring, but futile.

   Sisyphean task

   5 more examples

   Sisyphean labors

   Four bucketsful of water—one for each cell—seven for the long passage, two for lavatory and w.c.'s, brasses to clean, paint to dust. It seemed a Sisyphean task, no sooner ended than a new one was exacted.

   1906, Mary Higgs, Glimpses into the Abyss

   As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.

   2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848, archived from the original on 10 Aug 2020

   Fact is, this appliance actually contains some heaters in addition to its coolers. That apparent self-defeating contradiction is not a Sisyphean exercise in futility devised as a cruel philosophical joke by nihilistic engineers. It's actually just one of several brilliant pieces of engineering that have made these ubiquitous boxes utterly transformative forces in our lives.

   2020 September 7, Adam Ragusea, 0:14 from the start, in How refrigerators work, and how we all ended up with one, Macon, archived from the original on 15 Sep 2024

   But whoever does the policing, whether a supervisor or an operator, faces a Sisyphean battle against a well-documented phenomenon: something called automation complacency. When you automate any part of a task, the human overseer starts to trust that the machine has it handled and stops paying attention.

   2022 March 8, Lauren Smiley, “‘I’m the Operator’: The Aftermath of a Self-Driving Tragedy”, in WIRED, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2022

   Synonyms: herd cats, like painting the Forth Bridge

2. Greeknot comparablehuman sciencesRelating to Sisyphus.