Both Uses of
gratuitous
in
The Brothers Karamazov
- In Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the birth of the dauphin.†
Chpt 5 *
- For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I trust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind chauvinism—two elements which are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to misunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European ideas, from which his elder brother is suffering.†
Chpt 12
Definition:
-
(gratuitous) unnecessary and unwarranted
or less commonly (except where it is common in the legal field): costing nothing