Unsuccessfully

How to spell unsuccessfully

14 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce unsuccessfully

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unsuccessfully mean?

1. adverbIn a way that fails to achieve the intended result.

Unsuccessfully in a sentence

• He unsuccessfully tried to reset the password three times before calling support.

• The company unsuccessfully bid for the contract and lost it to a rival.

Where does unsuccessfully come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This long word is built outward from the Latin verb succedere, meaning 'to come after', 'to follow up' or 'to go up close to', formed from sub- 'under, up to' and cedere 'to go'. The past participle gave the noun successus, an advance or favourable outcome, which English borrowed through French in the 1500s as 'success'. The adjective 'successful' (literally 'full of success') appeared soon after, and adding the adverb-forming -ly produced 'successfully'. The negating prefix un- was then layered on the front to mean 'not in a successful way'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the doubled c and doubled s of success survive intact, while the join of -ful keeps a single l before the adverbial -ly adds a second, so the word ends in -fully, not -fuly.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• success (from Latin successus: an advance, a good outcome)
• -ful (full of)
• -ly (adverb suffix)