0 When an attempt to do something is unavailing, it is unsuccessful or has no positive effect:
But the retreat is unavailing: unawareness, like deafness, implies a defect, and we do not generally assume that operatic characters are defective.
However unavailing it might appear in retrospect, this view was not without foundation.
But since the initial question does not make (or at least does not need to make) any claim of desert, this answer seems unavailing.
All their efforts to row to shore were unavailing.
Plans for a new edition in 1970 proved unavailing, and the book has long been virtually unobtainable.
Galland writes with a certain terse wit, often at the expense of unavailing papal efforts to exercise any effective control over other powers.
It is a mistake to keep looking far new ideas and methods continually as if the old methods were necessarily completely unavailing.
I have considerable sympathy with his unavailing effort to get away from lawyers.
