little avail
1
8.0
- noun
:
poco provecho
- I have attempted to communicate with Thebes County authorities, to little avail.
Examples
-
The guys struggle to hold on to Meyer, to little avail.
Fiction book (1991) -
Hope for a preferable future will be of little avail unless joined to action.
Blog text (20) -
Throughout the 1990s, successive crackdowns on tax evaders were launched to little avail.
Academic text (2000) -
Obama has pressed Karzai to stamp out graft to little avail.
Academic text (2012) -
I worked in the reading room for several months under the withering gaze of the Fathers of Communism, but to little avail.
Academic text (2011) -
In the 1930s, Carl Sauer spent a great deal of energy, though to little avail, trying to institutionalize Latin American Studies on the University of California, Berkeley, campus and to obtain outside funding for them.
Academic text (1996) -
Because tribal advocates and scholars have been criticizing Montana for decades to little avail, there is ample reason for skepticism that the Supreme Court will take up this suggestion.
Academic text (2017) -
Moscow has attempted to secure order by adding intelligence agents and beefing up the presence of federal border guards, along with redeploying police from elsewhere in Russia—but to little avail.
Academic text (2010) -
Despite his countless attempts to persuade her, his arguments were to little avail.
-
The team's strategies seemed well thought out, but they led to little avail against the stronger opponents.
Synonyms
133
2.5
An action that will not help
1
3.8
An action that uses time and energy but gives no useful result
1
7.4
With little success and no real result
Antonyms
How Effective
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'very little benefit' is directly derivable from combining 'little' (to a small extent) with 'avail' (useful benefit), so the phrase transparently denotes minimal usefulness. Though somewhat formal/archaic in register, the compositional logic is clear and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words should understand it.
Etymology
The phrase little avail comes from the simple idea of something that gives almost no help. The word avail means 'use' or 'help', so if something is of little avail it is of 'very little use', and that's why the phrase means efforts or things give almost no benefit.