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
His most desperate efforts were all unavailing.
The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be altogether unavailing with the majority of this body.
A spasm of grief or unavailing regret crossed the judge's face as his head sank back again against the high back of his chair.
While sight thus failed me, sound was equally unavailing, for it was always the same--a sustained and unintermittent roar, a low, droning sound, deep and terrible, with no variations of dashing breakers or rushing rapids or falling cataracts.
As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring revenue is unavailing when exercised over the States in their collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.
The next year the master of Harrowby Hall decided not to have the best spare bedroom opened at all, thinking that perhaps the ghost's thirst for making herself disagreeable would be satisfied by haunting the furniture, but the plan was as unavailing as the many that had preceded it.
After careful examination, he concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it, but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he would venture to try something else.