Failing to accomplish an intended result:
— A stillborn plot to assassinate the President.

synonyms: abortive, unsuccessful.

Roget 732: unsuccessful, successless^†; failing, tripping etc. v.; at fault; unfortunate etc. 735.    abortive, addle, stillborn; fruitless, bootless; ineffectual, ineffective, inconsequential, trifling, nugatory; inefficient etc. (impotent) 158; insufficient etc. 640; unavailing etc. (useless) 645; of no effect.    aground, grounded, swamped, stranded, cast away, wrecked, foundered, capsized, shipwrecked, nonsuited^†; foiled; defeated etc. 731; struck down, borne down, broken down; downtrodden; overborne, overwhelmed; all up with; ploughed, plowed, plucked.    lost, undone, ruined, broken; bankrupt etc. (not paying) 808; played out; done up, done for; dead beat, ruined root and branch, flambe^†, knocked on the head; destroyed etc. 162.    frustrated, crossed, unhinged, disconcerted dashed; thrown off one's balance, thrown on one's back, thrown on one's beam ends^†; unhorsed, in a sorry plight; hard hit.    stultified, befooled^†, dished, hoist on one's own petard; victimized, sacrificed.    wide of the mark etc. (error) 495; out of one's reckoning etc. (inexpectation) 508^†; left in the lurch; thrown away etc. (wasted) 638; unattained; uncompleted etc. 730.    ... show more

Roget 360: dead, lifeless; deceased, demised, departed, defunct, extinct; late, gone, no more; exanimate^†, inanimate; out of the world, taken off, released; departed this life etc. v.; dead and gone; dead as a doornail, dead as a doorpost^†, dead as a mutton, dead as a herring, dead as nits; launched into eternity, gone to one's eternal reward, gone to meet one's maker, pushing up daisies, gathered to one's fathers, numbered with the dead.    dying etc. v.; moribund, morient^†; hippocratic; in articulo, in extremis; in the jaws of death, in the agony of death; going off; aux abois [Fr.]; one one's last legs, on one's death bed; at the point of death, at death's door, at the last gasp; near one's end, given over, booked; with one foot in the grave, tottering on the brink of the grave.    stillborn; mortuary; deadly etc. (killing) 361.    ... show more

of newborn infant Showing no signs of life at birth; not liveborn.