avail oneself of something to help oneself by making use of something that is available.

WINTERY is a valid scrabble word.

: to be of use or advantage : serve Our best efforts did not avail. transitive verb. : to produce or result in as a benefit or advantage : gain His efforts availed him nothing. avail oneself of or less commonly avail of. : to make use of : to take advantage of They availed themselves of his services.

Take advantage of, benefit by. For example, To get a better mortgage, he availed himself of the employee credit union. [

without success

Of no use or advantage, ineffective, as in All his shouting was to no avail; no one could hear him, or The life jacket was of little or no avail. This idiom uses avail in the sense of “advantage” or “assistance,” a usage dating from the mid-1400s. Also see to little purpose.

(1) His efforts were to no avail. (2) We tried to keep him alive but to no avail. (3) We searched the whole area but all to no avail. Robbie had disappeared.

Avail sentence example

1. They were fortunately able to avail themselves of it.
2. Again, we have evidence of the power of plants to avail themselves of the heat rays.
3. His good intentions were of no avail to his government.
4. He did not avail himself of the materials available in his day.

To have a secret plan, idea, or advantage that can be utilized if and when it is required. A reference to cheating at a card game by hiding a favorable card up one’s sleeve. She has a card up her sleeve if they ever try to fire her, since she knows about the boss’s unscrupulous business practices.

US, informal. : very strange or unusual ideas that are out in left field Her position is way out in left field.

A trump is a playing card which is elevated above its usual rank in trick-taking games. Typically, an entire suit is nominated as a trump suit; these cards then outrank all cards of plain (non-trump) suits.

Restless or skittish, unable to remain still, as in Nervous about the lecture he had to give, David was like a cat on hot bricks. The first expression replaced a still earlier one, like a cat on a hot bake-stone, which appeared in John Ray’s Proverbs (1678).

Okay, the news didn’t say that in so many words. But they did say, “The cat is on the roof,” which means the same thing. He asks his moron brother to take care of his cat. After a few days on vacation, Bob calls to say hi. The moron brother blurts out “Your cat is dead.”

: in a bad position The city is in a tight corner financially.

a mood in which you are very involved in your own thoughts and not paying attention to anything else: I could see she was in a brown study. He sank back on his pillow and fell into a brown study. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases.

1 : daydream. 2 : the condition of being lost in thought.

: to avoid having other people lose respect for oneself He tried to save face by working overtime.