Synonyms:
ineffective, uneffective, ineffectual
Meaning: not producing an intended effect; "an ineffective teacher"; "ineffective legislation"
Synonyms:
ineffective, ineffectual, unable
Meaning: lacking in power or forcefulness; "an ineffectual ruler"; "like an unable phoenix in hot ashes"
Synonyms:
futile, ineffectual, otiose, unavailing
Meaning: producing no result or effect; "a futile effort"; "the therapy was ineffectual"; "an otiose undertaking"; "an unavailing attempt"
Usage examples
Peters and Augustus now made several ineffectual efforts to swallow portions of the leather.
Like other peoples, the Greeks and Romans sought to obtain rain by magic, when prayers and processions had proved ineffectual.
He seized a carving-knife and attempted to defend himself with blind but ineffectual fury, and at length, with a desperate effort, rose and took to his heels.
Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they are disintegrating elements, which break up the straight line of effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless.
"Oh!" said Graham, and after an equally ineffectual attempt at the other man, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, who stood watching him and whispering together.
At present, Miss Julia Greeb was an unwedded damsel of forty summers, who, with the aid of art, was making desperate but ineffectual efforts to detain the youth which was slipping from her.
An English lady behind me was making ineffectual efforts to convey a coin into the still distant bag, so I took the money at her request and helped it forward to its destination. It was a two-franc piece.
Toward morning, the sky had resumed its brilliant purity and its heat. The balloon ascended, and, after several ineffectual attempts, fell into a current that, although not rapid, bore them toward the northwest.
When Emily perceived, that all her efforts were ineffectual, she interrogated the terrified Annette, and learned, that Madame Montoni had fallen into a doze soon after Emily's departure, in which she had continued, until a few minutes before her death.
Is it not the worst of sacrilege, a foul profanation of our human nature, which for us, at least, should be holy and awful, when the heroic and saintly martyrdom of a true Man is thus falsified into the self-schemed sham sacrifice, ineffectual, of a God?