unsuccessfully

English

Etymology

From unsuccessful +‎ -ly or un- +‎ successfully.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌʌnsəkˈsɛsfəli/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adverb

unsuccessfully (comparative more unsuccessfully, superlative most unsuccessfully)

1. Not successfully; without success; to no avail.
   • 1960 January, Iain D. O. Frew, “The Brora Colliery Tramway”, in Railway Magazine, page 56:

     Thereafter the route of the original line was followed to the harbour, beyond which an extension, a third of a mile long, led to the salt pans and a newly constructed inn, the "Stafford Arms", where Lady Stafford tried unsuccessfully to educate the locals to drink beer instead of a strong whisky.

   • 2019 May 1, Nathan Rabin, “My World of Flops Get a Load of This Maroon Case File #121/My Year of Flops # 18 Jacob Wohl”, in Nathan Rabin's Happy Place‎^[1]:

     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.

Synonyms

• fruitlessly

Antonyms

• successfully

Related terms

• unsuccessful
• successful

Translations

not successfully; without success — see also successlessly,‎ fruitlessly

• Czech: neúspěšně
• Esperanto: sensukcese
• Georgian: წარუმატებლად (c̣arumaṭeblad)
• Hindi: असफलतापूर्वक (asphaltāpūrvak)
• Hungarian: sikertelenül (hu)
• Russian: безуспе́шно (ru) (bezuspéšno)
• Spanish: no exitosamente