Word.ws English Dictionary

unfail

unfail verb: to undo or reverse the failure of; to return to an unfailed state.

Verb

unfail (third-person singular simple present unfails, present participle unfailing, simple past and past participle unfailed)

  1. (nonstandard, uncommon) To undo or reverse the failure of; to return to an unfailed state.
    • Once an input stream has failed, it is very hard to "unfail" it. You can clear the failbit and take your chances, but that is pretty useless in practice. If you cannot tolerate failure, read the input file as a sequence of strings and then parse the strings.1997, Cay S. Horstmann, Practical Object-Oriented Development in C++ and Java, Wiley
    • […] the problem with HUD running the Housing Authority has to be addressed, because you can't expect the agency that has failed, to unfail.2007, United States, United States House Committee on Financial Services, Federal housing response to Hurricane Katrina: hearing before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of...

Forms of unfail

third-person singular presentunfails
present participleunfailing
past participleunfailed
pastunfailed

Origin of unfail

From un- + fail.

Questions about unfail

What does unfail mean?
Unfail means to undo or reverse the failure of; to return to an unfailed state.
What part of speech is unfail?
Unfail is a verb.
What is the past tense of unfail?
The past tense of unfail is unfailed.

Words near unfail in the dictionary

  1. unfaded
  2. unfading
  3. unfadingly
  4. unfadingness
  5. unfagged
  6. unfail
  7. unfailable
  8. unfailably
  9. unfailed
  10. unfailing
  11. unfailingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unfail (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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