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Synonyms

unavailable

British  
/ ˌʌnəˈveɪləbəl /

adjective

  1. not obtainable or accessible

    unavailable for comment

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Explanation

If you can't meet your friend for dinner on Tuesday because you have other plans, you are unavailable. If the shoes you want have been sold out, they are unavailable. Unavailable means not accessible. If you avail yourself of something, you use it or take advantage of it. You might avail yourself of discount tickets to the theater provided by your school. If the tickets are all sold out, they are unavailable to you. In the context of dating, if someone is unavailable, he or she is already in a steady relationship or married. Someone emotionally unavailable is not open to sharing their feelings.

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Vocabulary lists containing unavailable

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Most FedEx service, including Freight and Logistics, will be unavailable.

From Barron's • May 25, 2026

Billoo’s daughters’ favorite halal crispy rice treats were unavailable for a time due to pandemic-related supply chain issues.

From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026

That changed when an international team returned to the site using modern technology unavailable to scientists forty years earlier.

From Science Daily • May 20, 2026

And most of those have been unavailable for its entirety.

From BBC • May 17, 2026

Without the discovery of as yet unavailable research tools, we will probably never know what the ancient foragers believed or what political dramas they experienced.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

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