Dead-letter synonyms

By the terms of the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead letter.

The reforms became more or less a dead letter.

The fact that a voluntary society with limited funds must contest the illegal decisions of local councils, without government support, seems likely to render this portion of the act of 1908 a dead letter.

True, she now agreed to recognise the independence of the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic and Batavian (Dutch) republics; but the masterful acquisitiveness of the First Consul and the weak conduct of Austrian and British affairs at that time soon made that clause of the treaty a dead letter.

This result revolted public opinion; the bishops acquired the habit (rendered easier by the personal expense involved in setting the law in motion) of vetoing, under the power given to them in the act, all prosecutions; and the act became a dead letter.