Helen and her mother, having witnessed his collapse, tried fruitlessly to revive him, but he died later that evening.

For a quarter hour I sat on my bed, enjoying the quiet and trying fruitlessly to think of new ways to break the curse.

The next day she tried fruitlessly to find a home for the baby through the classified advertisements.

She is penniless and frustrated, having spent years fruitlessly trying to interest traditional publishers in her work.

I then fruitlessly tried to get Linux to boot up.

For the past five minutes, she had been fruitlessly trying to raise Gabriel.

Workers in the emergency room try fruitlessly to separate the drunks from the other patients.

They tried fruitlessly to free the women, breaking street lamps and windows.

Others described being sent from one government office to another searching for documents, as they fruitlessly tried to comply with contradictory instructions.

Huma tried fruitlessly to understand what was revealed in that lapse.