Word.ws English Dictionary

avail

/əˈveɪl/

avail verb: to turn to the advantage of. Also the clipping of available.

Verb

avail (third-person singular simple present avails, present participle availing, simple past and past participle availed)

  1. (often, reflexive, transitive) To turn to the advantage of.
    • I availed myself of the opportunity.
    • It asserts that the museum has clear protocols for dealing with any form of discrimination or discontent, which it says [Tanya] Barson never availed herself of, […]2021 July 25, Stephen Burgen, “Departures at high-profile Barcelona museum provoke anger in art world”, in The Observer, →ISSN
  2. (transitive) To be of service to.
    • Artifices will not avail the sinner in the day of judgment.
  3. (transitive) To promote; to assist.
  4. (intransitive) To be of use or advantage; to answer or serve the purpose; to have strength, force, or efficacy sufficient to accomplish the object.
    • The plea in court must avail.
    • This scheme will not avail.
  5. (Africa, India, elsewhere proscribed) To provide; to make available.
    • With this initiative, Valucard becomes an open system that is not limited to point of sale (POS) transactions, but now avails cash to its holders in various locations nationwide.2004 November 16, Nik Ogbulie, “Decongesting the Banking Floors”, in This Day, archived from the original on 22 Jan 2009
  6. (Africa, India, elsewhere proscribed) To use or take advantage of (an opportunity or resource).
    • You can avail discounts on food.
    • Over 85.3% of all persons who have adopted this method of contraception availed this service from government facilities.2014, Shilpa Vishwas Date, Jyoti Rokade, Vidya Mule, Shreedher Dandapannavar, “Female sterilization failure: Review over a decade and its clinicopathological correlation”, in International Journal of...

Noun

avail (countable and uncountable, plural avails)

  1. Effect in achieving a goal or aim; purpose, use (now usually in negative constructions).
    • I tried fixing it to no avail.
    • Labor, without economy, is of little avail.
  2. (US) Proceeds; profits from business transactions.
    • the avails of their own industry1862, Elijah Porter Barrows, The State And Slavery
  3. An advertising slot or package.
    • The salesperson at an affiliate TV station might prepare an avail which offers two weeks of spots in early and late news[…].1994, Barry L. Sherman, Telecommunications Management: Broadcasting/cable and the New Technologies, →ISBN, page 353
    • At an avail, the ad server plays out the MPEG-2 audio/video elementary streams.2004, Walter S. Ciciora et al., Modern Cable Television Technology: Video, Voice, and Data Communications, →ISBN, page 123
  4. (US) A press avail.
    • While holding an avail yesterday, the candidate lashed out at critics.
  5. (UK) Non-binding notice of availability for work.
  6. (oil industry) A readily available stock of oil.
    • Total crude oil avails (production plus purchases) of even highly "self-sufficient" refiners are far greater than their reported refinery inputs.1967, Interstate Compact on Oil and Gas (10th Extension), page 95
  7. (obsolete) Benefit; value, profit; advantage toward success.
    • I shal take the aduenture sayd Balen that god wille ordeyne me / but the swerd ye shalle not haue at this tyme by the feythe of my body / ye shalle repente hit within short tyme sayd the damoysel/ For I wold haue the swerd more for your auaylle than for myne / for I am passyng heuy for your sake1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “ij”, in Le Morte Darthur, book II
    • hardy Citizens[…]sticke not to sacrifice their honours and consciences, as those of old, their lives, for their Countries availe and safety.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 1, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book III, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  8. (obsolete, poetic) Effort; striving.
    • And ev'n now, though he breathless lies, his sails / Are struggling with the winds, for our avails / T'explore a passage hid from human tract, / Will fame him in the enterprise or fact.1613, Thomas Campion, “Songs of Mourning”, in Poetical Works (in English) of Thomas Campion, published 1907, page 125

Also used as

avail is also the clipping of available.

avail meaning in Persian

avail in Persian

benefit; value, profit; advantage toward success
فایده fâyede

Examples of avail in a sentence

  • Medicines will not avail to halt the disease.
  • Words avail very little with me, young man.1817, Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy:
  • What, then, shall avail the prayers of All the People?1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC, page 21:
  • Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead; you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill.1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 071:
  • It's also a city which has been doggedly pressing (to little avail) for an integrated transport system for two decades.2024 December 11, Richard Wilcock, “Strategy offers a chance to reset local transport planning”, in RAIL, number 1024, page 10:

All 40 example sentences with avail

Antonyms of avail

Forms of avail

Verb
third-person singular presentavails
present participleavailing
past participleavailed
pastavailed
Noun
pluralavails
Adjective
comparativemore avail
superlativemost avail

Past tense of avail: availed

Origin of avail

From Middle English availen (“to be of use”), from Old French a (“to”) + vail from valoir (“to be worth”), from Latin valere (“to be worthy, strong”).

Words formed from avail

Phrases with avail

Words that rhyme with avail

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about avail

What does avail mean?
Avail means to turn to the advantage of.
What is avail in Persian?
Avail in Persian is فایده (fâyede). See Avail meaning in Persian.
How do you use avail in a sentence?
Medicines will not avail to halt the disease.
What part of speech is avail?
Avail can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce avail?
Avail is pronounced /əˈveɪl/.
What is the past tense of avail?
The past tense of avail is availed.

Words near avail in the dictionary

  1. avagrahas
  2. Avah
  3. avahi
  4. avahis
  5. avaidable
  6. avail
  7. availabilities
  8. availability
  9. availability bias
  10. availability biases
  11. availability cascade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: avail (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-avail.ogg, en-au-avail.ogg.

Cite this entry: “avail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/avail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.