unsuccessful
un·suc·cess·ful/ˌʌnsəkˈsɛsfl̩/adjective
unsuccessful is spelled U-N-S-U-C-C-E-S-S-F-U-L, 4 syllables: un·suc·cess·ful. The wrong spelling people search most is unsucessful: about 100 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 15 of all searches for the word. Unsuccessful is an adjective meaning “Failed, not successful”.
How do you spell unsuccessful?
Unsuccessful is spelled U-N-S-U-C-C-E-S-S-F-U-L. 5 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for unsuccessful in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
What does unsuccessful mean?
adjective
- 1
Failed, not successful.
His unsuccessful attempt earned him sympathy, condolences, and an occasional good-natured ribbing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce unsuccessful?
- /ˌʌnsəkˈsɛsfl̩/
Unsuccessful has 4 syllables, split un·suc·cess·ful in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-unsuccessful.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of unsuccessful
- more unsuccessful comparative
- most unsuccessful superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is unsuccessful?
Unsuccessful appears 5.4 times per million words in written English, the 10,680th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Unsuccessful in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense failed, not successful:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | infructueux |
| German | erfolglos |
| Portuguese | malsucedido |
| Spanish | no exitoso |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does unsuccessful come from?
From un- + successful.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).