Word.ws English Dictionary

futilely

US/ˈfju.təl.li/

futilely adverb: in a futile manner.

Adverb

futilely (comparative more futilely, superlative most futilely)

  1. In a futile manner.
    • Near-synonyms: fruitlessly, pointlessly, to no avail, in vain
    • My fingers clawed futilely at the unyielding portal, while my eyes sought in vain for a duplicate of the button which had given us ingress.1913 January–May, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Gods of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as The Gods of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell]...

Examples of futilely in a sentence

  • Her counsellors […] were reluctant to accept the cession of Bombay and Tangier, and […] it proved costly to maintain, and when the present struggle was over it was futilely abandoned in 1684.1966, H. V. Livermore, A New History of Portugal, page 191:
  • […] within those dolls where some things still lurk unseen, struggling futilely to undo the red threads that bind their forms, […]2014, Rin Chupeco, The Girl from the Well:

Synonyms of futilely

Forms of futilely

comparativemore futilely
superlativemost futilely

Origin of futilely

From futile + -ly.

Questions about futilely

What does futilely mean?
Futilely means in a futile manner.
How do you use futilely in a sentence?
Her counsellors […] were reluctant to accept the cession of Bombay and Tangier, and […] it proved costly to maintain, and when the present struggle was over it was futilely abandoned in 1684.
What part of speech is futilely?
Futilely is an adverb.
How do you pronounce futilely?
Futilely is pronounced /ˈfju.təl.li/ (US).

Words near futilely in the dictionary

  1. futhork
  2. futhorks
  3. Futian
  4. futibatinib
  5. futile
  6. futilely
  7. futileness
  8. futilest
  9. futilism
  10. futilitarian
  11. futilitarianism

Source and license

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