unavailing
/ʌnəˈveɪlɪŋ
/adjective
Achieving little or nothing; ineffective: their efforts were unavailing...
- And third, we have rights where ordinary economic and political levers of change prove unavailing in efforts to improve individual well-being.
- Having rejected an unavailing reformist road to socialism, they now believed they had reformed capitalism substantially enough that the interests of workers and capitalists coincided.
- The second response to the sterility objection - that a procreation requirement would be unduly intrusive - is equally unavailing.
Synonyms
ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious, vain, in vain, futile, useless, unsuccessful, non-successful, nugatory, failed, fruitless, unproductive, profitless, unprofitable, pointless, to no avail, to no purpose, to no effect, abortive, inadequate
archaic for nought, bootless
rare Sisyphean
Derivatives
unavailingly
- Just occasionally, perhaps, we should have the humility to see the awfulness of the world that they inhabit, and which they strive so unavailingly to control.
- This is a mantra which must be engraved in the wall at Tannadice, because it's the line which Paul Sturrock repeated endlessly and unavailingly.
- They looked eagerly but unavailingly for ‘some business that we can carry on in connection with our trap-business, to which we can shift our help when our trap-trade slackens up.’