Word.ws English Dictionary

successless

successless adjective: without success; unsuccessful.

Adjective

successless (comparative more successless, superlative most successless)

  1. (archaic) Without success; unsuccessful.
    • “Belfield fired first, and missed; the Baronet was not so successless.”1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, I.ii.5
    • How successless that expedient has been in regard to curing me of my passion for her, you know too well.1792, Charlotte Smith, Desmond, Broadview, published 2001, page 296

Forms of successless

comparativemore successless
superlativemost successless

Origin of successless

From success + -less.

Words formed from successless

Questions about successless

What does successless mean?
Successless means without success; unsuccessful.
What part of speech is successless?
Successless is an adjective.

Words near successless in the dictionary

  1. successive
  2. successively
  3. successiveness
  4. successivities
  5. successivity
  6. successless
  7. successlessly
  8. successlessness
  9. successor
  10. successor ideology
  11. successoral

Source and license

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