succourless

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

succour +‎ -less

Adjective[edit]

succourless (not comparable)

  1. Without succour; with no source of aid.
    • 1794, Charlotte Smith, chapter V, in The Banished Man. [], volume I, London: [] T[homas] Cadell, Jun. and W[illiam] Davies, (successors to Mr. [Thomas] Cadell) [], →OCLC, page 99:
      Succourleſs as I was, and enfeebled by having ſo long contended with the boiling torrent, I gave myſelf up for loſt, when, as a laſt effort, I hallooed as loud as I could;⁠—[]
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXIV, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 121:
      For in their succorless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cooke with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have dared.