a. [f. SUBSTANCE sb. + -LESS.] Devoid of substance, unsubstantial.
1816. Coleridge, Hum. Life, Poems 316. If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state.
1822. W. Tennant, Thane of Fife, VI. 32. That conclave substanceless of gilded things.
1858. Lytton, What will He do? IX. i. You have made that life substanceless as a ghost—that future barren as the grave.
1895. Moir, in Galt’s Wks., I. p. xci. The arguments … might be … too shadowy and substanceless to convey intellectual satisfaction.
