vain bid

As its forelegs went over the edge, the long arms shot out, scored the ice on the far side in a vain bid for purchase.

His intestines started to slide out, and he doubled over in a vain bid to stem the fatal flow.

Well, Quintus wanted his freedom, even if he wasted it in a vain bid to return to Rome.

Mr Lamont's squandering of £1 billion in his vain bid to prop up the pound has not helped.

Göring ordered that they be renamed "offensive circles" in a vain bid to improve rapidly declining morale.

The hordebeasts packed inside the tunnel fought each other madly in a vain bid to escape the contents of the cauldrons.

Ammunition became in short supply, and many fighters left the army in order to travel to their homes in a vain bid to protect their families.

The Bank of England squandered a huge chunk of Britain's precious foreign currency reserves in a vain bid to prop it up.

She rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth in a vain bid to obliterate the taste and touch of his lips still tingling on hers.

He wanted to destroy things and now he remembered a long-forgotten fact, how in that play-pen he had broken things in a vain bid for attention.

In a vain bid to persuade Roberto to forgo his visits to restaurants and nightclubs, I sold the house in Kensington and we moved to Wimbledon.

(It is said that when the nizam of Hyderabad discovered that the church would be higher than the Charminar, he made a vain bid to have its height reduced.)

Magnus Maximus, the soldier with the dream of empire, was a fact; he commanded at Segontium until the time when he crossed to Gaul in his vain bid for power.

St Johnstone coach John McClelland came on as substitute in the second half in a vain bid to restore confidence to a rearguard which badly missed the suspended John Inglis.

In 1987, Gee joined nine legislative colleagues in filing suit against Edwards in a vain bid to halt what the lawmakers saw as continued runaway state spending, which was adversely affecting both the general fund and dedicated accounts.

The King, recorded in history as a man of action, seeing the impending disaster, impetuously urged his horse into the fast flowing river in a vain bid to save his servant, only to be also overcome and drowned by the torrent.

When the Nizam of Hyderabad came to know that the height of this cathedral was going to be far more than that of Charminar, he made a vain bid to order that its height should be brought down.

So, as headlines scream that vain bids to save the euro threaten us with "Armageddon", the EU's ruling elite has toppled two more elected prime ministers, to replace them with technocratic officials who can be trusted to do Brussels's bidding.

I watched the pair of them fishing, climbing, racing through the edge of the Wild Forest in a vain bid to escape Ralf who (with the help of Ector's two most trusted men) rode guard on Arthur at all times, day or night.

The Preacher's stallion reared but he re-adjusted his position and fired twice, the first bullet ripping through the throat of a lean, bearded man, the second punching into the back of a rider who had swung his horse in a vain bid to escape the sudden battle.