Unsuccessfully

//ˌʌnsəkˈsɛsfəli// adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    Not successfully; without success; to no avail.

    "He’s like more successful but equally morally abhorrent right-wing undercover operative James O’Keefe’s non-union Mexican equivalent, a dunce whose one move involves incompetently attempting to frame figures of seemingly unimpeachable moral integrity, like Robert Mueller or good old Mayor Pete, as deviant sex criminals like Wohl’s God Donald Trump by unsuccessfully trying to get people to come forward with bogus sexual assault allegations."

Adverb
  1. 1
    without success wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
badlyfruitlesslyfruitlesslyvain

Example

More examples

"He tried unsuccessfully to domineer over his office workers."

Etymology

From unsuccessful + -ly or un- + successfully.

Related phrases

no avail

More for "unsuccessfully"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.