unavailing

American  

[uhn-uh-vey-ling] / ˌʌn əˈveɪ lɪŋ /

adjective

1. ineffectual; futile.

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unavailing British  

/ ˌʌnəˈveɪlɪŋ /

adjective

1. useless or futile

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Other Word Forms

• unavailingly
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of unavailing

First recorded in 1660–70; un- ¹ + avail + -ing ²

Explanation

Something that's unavailing doesn't achieve the desired results. After an unavailing search for a pair of matching socks, you were forced to wear a blue and green striped sock on one foot and a pink polka-dotted sock on the other. When your efforts are ineffective, they're unavailing. A teacher's unavailing attempt to keep your class quiet means that the noise continues, and an underdog basketball team's unavailing struggle to make up the ten-point lag at halftime means they ultimately lose the game. This adjective comes from the now-obsolete availing, "advantageous," combined with the prefix un-, "not."

Example Sentences

As part of their unavailing effort, the judges quoted a 1940 speech then-U.S.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 27, 2025

That memo also includes an analysis of why, in the authors’ views, those defenses are generally unavailing with respect to criminal charges.

From Slate • Jul. 20, 2023

But despite said indignities, Italian Americans’ quest for affirmative action has been mostly unavailing.

From Washington Post • Nov. 30, 2022

On the negative side, the crisis has shone a spotlight on London as a magnet for corrupt Russian money and the government’s unavailing efforts to clean it up so far.

From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2022

The Martians of H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, preoccupied with the suppression of Bournemouth and Jersey City, never noticed until too late that their immunological defenses were unavailing against the microbes of Earth.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan