unfail

U1N1F4A1I1L1

verb

To undo or reverse the failure of; to return to an unfailed state.

Scrabble 9

Meanings

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

present singular third person unfails · participle present unfailing · participle past unfailed · past unfailed

  1. nonstandarduncommonTo undo or reverse the failure of; to return to an unfailed state.

    Trying to Unfail the Homeless Individual – Wibke Schniedermann.

    2017, Katharina Motyl, Regina Schober, The Failed Individual: Amid Exclusion, Resistance, and the Pleasure of Non-Conformity, Campus Verlag, →ISBN, page 139
    3 more examples

    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 Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, February 06, 2007, page 135

    So-called failed states were perceived as breeding grounds for transnational violence, so great powers began to compete for the right to "unfail" them, to make or re-make their regimes to eliminate security contagion.

    2007, David Kerr, Liu Fei, Fei Liu, The International Politics of EU-China Relations, Oxford University Press, page 305

Origin

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

unfail. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfail

MLA

“unfail.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfail. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “unfail,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfail.

Source: unfail on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.