Having no teeth, or lacking power, effectiveness, or ability to enforce something.
Simple compound: 'tooth' (from Old English 'tōth') + 'less' (suffix meaning without). The word entered English around 1000 AD for the literal meaning, and by the 1800s it was being used metaphorically to describe laws or organizations that seemed powerless.
Churchill famously described a treaty as having 'toothless' enforcement provisions, and the metaphor became standard in legal and political language — it's fascinating how our bodies give us the language to describe power itself, because teeth are simultaneously weapons, tools, and symbols of ability to bite back.
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