a. Chiefly poet. [f. SUM sb.1 or v.1 + -LESS.] Without number; that cannot be ‘summed’ or counted; incalculable.

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1599.  Shaks., Hen. V., I. ii. 165. To … make their Chronicle as rich with prayse, As is the Owse and bottom of the Sea With sunken Wrack, and sum-lesse Treasuries.

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1667.  Milton, P. L., VIII. 36. While the sedentarie Earth … receaves, As Tribute such a sumless journey brought Of incorporeal speed…, Speed, to describe whose swiftness Number failes.

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1725.  Pope, Odyss., IV. 86. Around the Palace shines The sumless treasure of exhausted mines.

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1769.  Falconer, Shipwr., III. 207. Xerxes … Advanc’d with Persia’s sumless troops to war.

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1823.  Campbell, Last Man, 53. Test of all sumless agonies.

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1823.  De Quincey, Herder, Wks. 1859, XIII. 131. From the abyss of distance and of sumless elevation.

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1876.  C. L. Smith, trans. Tasso, XI. xxxvii. Its huge machines and beams of sumless power.

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