The kanji 駄 primarily conveys the meaning of "worthless," "useless," "inferior," or "a pack animal's load." It often implies something that is of poor quality, burdensome, or not valuable.

・On-yomi (音読み): da (ダ) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): nashi (なし) (usually used in compound words)

⚫︎ 駄作（ださく） Translation: a poor piece of work; a failure; a flop ⚫︎ 駄目（だめ） Translation: no good; useless; hopeless; no; impossible ⚫︎ 無駄（むだ） Translation: futility; uselessness; waste; extravagance

The kanji 駄 is a phono-semantic compound (形声文字). The left side is the "horse" radical 馬（うま）, indicating a connection to animals, particularly horses. The right side is 牙（きば）, meaning "tusk" or "tooth", which also functions phonetically, lending the sound "da" to the character. Thus, 駄 originally depicted a horse carrying a load, and over time, it came to represent "a pack animal's load", and then extended to the sense of something worthless or burdensome.