as in futile
producing no results
an unsuccessful attempt to fix the faucet ourselves
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of unsuccessful
Attempts to reason with the boar, as well as lassoing it, meanwhile, were unsuccessful.
—
Saman Shafiq, USA Today, 10 Sep. 2025
With the pair previously having a WWE tryout in late 2022 that was unsuccessful, the pair may finally arrive in the company three years later.
—Andrew Ravens, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Sep. 2025
Those attempts have been unsuccessful so far.
—Kacen Bayless, Kansas City Star, 9 Sep. 2025
That part of his plan was unsuccessful as he was cornered for interviews by seven television stations.
—Kirsten Fiscus, The Tennessean, 9 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for unsuccessful
Saman Shafiq, USA Today, 10 Sep. 2025
With the pair previously having a WWE tryout in late 2022 that was unsuccessful, the pair may finally arrive in the company three years later.
—Andrew Ravens, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Sep. 2025
Those attempts have been unsuccessful so far.
—Kacen Bayless, Kansas City Star, 9 Sep. 2025
That part of his plan was unsuccessful as he was cornered for interviews by seven television stations.
—Kirsten Fiscus, The Tennessean, 9 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for unsuccessful
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unsuccessful
Adjective
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And, perhaps most dangerous still, these dreams of modernity shine an unwanted light on the futile hardship of the family’s status quo.—
Adam Solomons,
IndieWire,
4 Sep. 2025
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This alternating strategy is futile.—
Wesley Alexander Hill,
Forbes.com,
3 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Digital fingerprinting collates an array of data from your phone — your IP address, device model and OS, time zone, setup and anything else if can get — to create a unique identifier in aggregate, even if each individual data snippet us useless on its own.—
Zak Doffman,
Forbes.com,
10 Sep. 2025
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Never mind that large language models have so far proven useless at 95% of the companies that have made their workforces try to use them, researchers from MIT recently found.—
Allison Morrow,
CNN Money,
10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Garbowit recalls that there were only around sixteen members of Congress lined up behind Thanedor’s abortive resolution—so the fact that Green’s follow-up motion garnered seventy-nine supporters in the caucus is a sign of progress.—
Chris Lehmann,
Harpers Magazine,
20 Aug. 2025
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On the one hand, as Tevye is fond of saying, the story unfolds in a hardscrabble shtetl in the Ukrainian plains in the months leading up to the Russian Empire’s abortive 1905 revolution.—
David Lyman,
The Enquirer,
25 July 2025
Cite this Entry
“Unsuccessful.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unsuccessful. Accessed 15 Sep. 2025.
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