adj. (old).—Fruitless; inadequate; wanting a cover or excuse; ‘impertinent or trifling’ (BAILEY): now only in phrase, ‘A SLEEVELESS ERRAND’ = (B. E. and GROSE) ‘a fool’s errand, in search of what it is impossible to find,’ CHAUCER, Testament of Love, ii. 334.

1

  14[?].  Reliquiæ Antiquæ, I. 83. Syrrus, thynke not lonke and y schall telle yow a SLEVELES RESON.

2

  1579.  J. LYLY, Euphues, ‘The Anatomy of Wit,’ 114. Neither faine for thy selfe any SLEEVELESS EXCUSE.

3

  1593.  Passionate Morrice [Shakespeare Society], 63. Shee had dealt better if shee had sent himselfe away with a crabbed answere, then so vnmannerly to vse him by SLEEVELES EXCUSES.

4

  1599.  JOSEPH HALL, Satires, iv. 1.

        Worse than the Logogryphes of later times,
Or Hundreth Riddles shak’d to SLEEVE-LESSE RHYMES.

5

  1602.  SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida, v. 4, 10. That same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a SLEEVELESS ERRAND.

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  d. 1612.  HARINGTON, Epigrams, III. 9. My men came backe as from a SLEEUELESS ARRANT.

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  1620.  FLETCHER, The Little French Lawyer, ii. 2.

          Din.  To be despatch’d upon a SLEEVELESS ERRAND!
To leave my friend engag’d, mine honour tainted!

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  1630.  TAYLOR (‘The Water Poet’), Workes, II. iii.

        Or a neat Laundresse, or a Hearbwife can,
Carry a SLEEUELESSE MESSAGE now and than.

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  1633.  JONSON, A Tale of a Tub, iv. 4.

        Till it [a coat] did play me such a SLEEVELESS ERRAND,
As I had nothing where to put mine arms in,
And then I threw it off.

10

  d. 1680.  BUTLER, Works, ii. 296.

        They are the likelier, quoth Bracton,
To bring us many a SLEEVELESS ACTION.

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  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. SLEEVELESS STORY, a Tale of a Tub, or of a Cock and a Bull.

12

  1706.  WARD, The Wooden World Dissected, 22. He sends him upon a thousand SLEEVELESS ERRANDS to the great Consolation of the Footman.

13

  1737–41.  WARBURTON, The Divine Legation, iii. To save himself from the vexation of A SLEEVELESS ERRAND.

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