forlorn attempt

They had been planning all that day, but it would be a forlorn attempt.

But if anybody does, he'll conclude that we hiked off in a forlorn attempt to get help, and soon died.

His voice rose a little in a forlorn attempt to drown the continued unpleasantness next door.

It was a forlorn attempt, and she crushed it effortlessly.

Not sar-casm, I realized; a forlorn attempt to keep some cheerfulness alive.

The forlorn attempt at a jest appealed to Kenmuir.

In 1985 a section of the floor of this bunker was dug up in a forlorn attempt to find the secret tunnel.

I pull my battledress jacket over my head in a forlorn attempt to escape from the tiny tormentors; sleep is impossible.

Finally she lay down on Ayla's bed, curling herself around the baby, cuddling close to him in a forlorn attempt to draw warmth and security from someone.

Zeb said, and made another forlorn attempt to pull his hand through the topological - and trichological - nightmare that was his hair.

Lisa Beaton pointed me to relevant papers in a forlorn attempt to atone for whoring her soul to Big Pharma.

The formula the BBC uses in its forlorn attempts to counterattack has been familiar ever since its 2008 series Climate Wars.

The series follows both Alice and Gil's somewhat forlorn attempts to find the perfect partner, while it is clear to the viewer that they would be the ideal couple.

Ehlvest's forlorn attempt at counterplay with 40 f3 Bf3 41 Re6 was destroyed by Ivanchuk's 41 . . . Ne4!

The flash of camera bulbs met her and caught her unawares, and I saw her throw up her arm in a forlorn attempt to hide her face.

Yet, in the months before moving in with Jelka (they married in 1903), Delius had returned to Florida in a forlorn attempt to rediscover Chloe.

STANAVFORLANT turned in a forlorn attempt to hang on to the Russian ship who, probably, had not even sighted Gloucester.

It was frustrating that any English commentary was usually blocked out by Arabic, although one of the commentator's forlorn attempts to pronounce Paul Gascoigne's name was a rich source of amusement.

Unaware of the tragedy being enacted above, Peter had continued, for a little time after the children left, to play gaily on his pipes: no doubt rather a forlorn attempt to prove to himself that he did not care.

Will had peered into a couple of these volumes in his youth - a last forlorn attempt to find favour with Hugo -but the contents had been as incomprehensible to him as a page of mathematical equations.

Charles's earliest memory is playing quietly on the floor with a train set while his mother sat sobbing on the edge of the bed, his father smiling weakly at him in a forlorn attempt to reassure his son that everything was all right.

More pathos still comes from his forlorn attempt to make amends for the mistakes of his past and to improve his future by striking up with Miss Kenton (actually Mrs Benn, although Stevens fearfully avoids using her married name).

A commentary in the London Independent about Britain's fuddy-duddy Conservative Party and its forlorn attempts at image enhancement observed, "Here they are, doing their best to be a little bit groovy , a little bit New Labour, and what do we do?

Our family's forlorn attempt to build a loft extension (the collapsing mortgage market notwithstanding) already has to contend with strict planning and building control regulations, but even I wasn't prepared for the petty-minded intransigence of Haringey Council when it came to permission to put a joist in our side of the wall.

Since Papandreou left the cinema that night over a year ago there have been successive forlorn attempts to rescue Greece, Ireland and Portugal - but each time the onerous terms attached to them meant they did little more than kick the can a little further down the road and increase the potential size of the ultimate default.