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Futilely   Listen
adverb
Futilely  adv.  In a futile manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Futilely" Quotes from Famous Books



... particularly, I may as well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a girl in a red tam-o’-shanter, but lake and summer cottages were mine alone. I landed and began at once my search for Morgan. There were many paths through the woods back of the cottages, and I followed several futilely before I at last found a small house snugly bid away in ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... in love, and in reverence he buried, in the little rose garden that had been Jane Clayton's pride and love, the poor, charred form and beside it the great black warriors who had given their lives so futilely ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... He had no hope. His life would continue like this dingy, ill-smelling waiting room where men in uniform slept in the fetid air until they should be ordered-out to march or to stand in motionless rows, endlessly, futilely, like toy soldiers a child has forgotten in ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... mass, piling higher and ever higher, toppled forward on the temporarily redeemed areas. For on this vastly thicker bulk the smoky fingers of flame had no more effect than did the exertions of the scythemen, hacking futilely away at the tough intricacies, or the rattling reapers entangling themselves to become like ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... preternaturally cool and competent. For the first time since the Modane episode I was my clear-sighted self. I had been trying futilely to blindfold my eyes, to explain the inexplicable, to be unaware of the obvious. Now with a sort of grim relief I looked the facts ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... looked the saddest, sickest, bleakest creature I had ever seen. He was so wretched, so miserable, so helpless. And Sundry Buyers was just as impotent. The expression on his face was of pain and hopelessness, and as he pressed his abdomen he lumbered futilely about, ever seeking something he might do and ever failing to find it. He pottered. He would stand and stare at one rope for a minute or so at a time, following it aloft with his eyes through the maze of ropes and stabs and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... he dashed up the rocky trail to the chasm, calling to Jeanne, shrieking to her, telling her that he was coming. He reached the edge of the precipice and looked down. Below him was the canoe and Jeanne. She was fighting futilely against the resistless flood; he saw her paddle wrenched suddenly from her hands, and as it went swirling beyond her reach she cried out his name again. Philip shouted, and the girl's white face was turned up to him. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... failure. It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... interminable romps with Scraps. So strong was the play-instinct in him, as well as was his constitution strong, that he continually outplayed Scraps to abject weariness, so that he could only lie on the deck and pant and laugh through air-draughty lips and dab futilely in the air with weak forepaws at Michael's continued ferocious- acted onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps out-bullied him and out-scaled him at least three times, and was as careless and unwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby elephant on a lawn ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... at the waitress and watched her later bringing dishes to a purple-faced fat man at an adjoining table. The fat man was futilely endeavoring to tell secrets to the waitress by contorting his features and screwing up his eyes. He reminded Rachel of Brander, only Brander told secrets without trying. She finished and hurried out. She would be hungry ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... tense whisper to Corrigan. The cold savagery in it had paralyzed him, and he gasped as Trevison's eyes found him, and the pistol that he tried to raise dangled futilely from his nerveless fingers. It thudded heavily upon the boards of the floor an instant later, a shriek of fear mingling with the sound as he went down in a heap from a vicious, deadening ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... sought futilely to rouse themselves because the dream had now ceased to be pleasant, and yet it was only an ugly picture projected against a beautiful background deepening into a purple ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... Suddenly, however, the feeling toward him cooled. He remembered afterward, although at the time he was too absorbed to fully appreciate it, that this change began one day shortly after he had learned of Nate's departure. As he went mechanically about his work, he was pondering futilely upon his friend's mysterious journey, and his tantalizing hopes lying untried in the depths of the ravine. He hardly noticed the conversation of the men until something was said that touched upon the wish ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... see, that the strike was a failure in spite of his efforts. And she was sensible. The strike had failed; nothing was to be gained by sustaining the ebbing remnants of it, by making men and women and children suffer futilely. ... She would have ended it and begun straight-way preparing a strike that would not fail. But she did not say so to him. He HAD to fight. She saw that. She saw, too, that it was not in him to admit defeat or to surrender. It would be necessary to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... worn more of it than seemed necessary to him. It had made her appear clumsy and over-fed. He was immensely relieved to find that she now wore a rose-coloured pignoir, and that it was wrapped very closely about her slim, long figure, as if she were afflicted by the cold and was futilely trying to protect her shivering flesh. He shuffled across the room and sat down beside her. "I'm glad you came. It is—oh, it is horribly lonely here in ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... and struck futilely. But the ball caromed from the hard ground, hit Burns with a resounding thud, and bounced away. Clark broke for first, and Moore dashed for home. Like a tiger the little catcher pounced upon the ball, and, leaping back into line, blocked ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... did it in obedience to the rules of my own conscience and with regard to the laws of nature, which I should have put before my conscience, as I have far greater respect for them. I did it, as we so often futilely say, for the best. But how often, oh, my dear friends, how often since I have thought that I may have ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... swept by the clock hanging behind the bar. He glanced dispiritedly out the window at the perpetually cloudy sky and idly watched a rivulet of water race down the dirty pane. He loosened his collar and futilely mopped at his neck with the soggy handkerchief, then irritably flung ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow

... and more he sprang from his bed to press his face against the thick glass of the little port and to rage futilely that he could not elongate his six feet of anatomy, and slip through. In vain he would throw his weight against the door, without so much as shaking it. And then he would sink back upon the bunk and determine to conserve his strength by snatching a bit of sleep. And he would wait—since ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... as did Barraclough; but what did resistance avail? The infamous Pierce, who had me on one side, twisted my arm in warning lest I should kick futilely against the pricks. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of deriving it. To be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by the imagination out of its object. The inspired poet finds a word so sympathetic with the thought that it caresses ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... to his bow, and drawing the slim shaft far back let drive with all the force of the tough wood that only he could bend. As the arrow sank deeply into his side, Numa leaped to his feet with a roar of mingled rage and pain. He leaped futilely at the grinning ape-man, tore at the protruding end of the shaft, and then, springing into the trail, paced back and forth beneath his tormentor. Again Tarzan loosed a swift bolt. This time the missile, aimed with care, lodged in the lion's spine. The great creature halted in ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... there, grouped about the body of the dead Grabritin, looking futilely down the river to where it made an abrupt curve to the west, a quarter of a mile below us, and was lost to sight, as though we expected to see the truant returning to us with our precious launch—the thing that meant life or death to us in ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... hell—were as foreign to his own as if they had been the dreams of people on another planet. Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped, uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... would never penetrate the prayers and tears That futilely bring torture to dead and dying ears; There I should lie annihilate and my dead heart would bless Oblivion—the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... CROSS IS MADE: An old sailor goes mad waiting futilely for the return of a treasure expedition he has sent out, and the madness of his idea spreads ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... he regarded the charm of her bending profile; the well-characterized though softly lined nose, the round chin with, as it were, a second leap in its curve to the throat, and the sweep of the eyelashes over the rosy cheek during the sedulously lowered glance. How futilely he had laboured to express the character of that face in clay, and, while catching it in substance, had yet lost something ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... balance, staggered toward the glittering machine. As he stumbled against the transparent tube that contained the brain, he clenched his fist to strike futilely at it. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson

... of what she could do futilely over, and at the end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... futilely at first, the drivers of the engine at last caught the rails. The engine moved, advanced, travelled past the depot and the freight train, and gathering speed, rolled out on the track beyond. Smoke, black ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... mocked. He considered his wife's assertions as merely the maunderings of an extravagant enthusiast. She was sincere—more the pity!—but she knew absolutely nothing of the problems with which she insisted on entangling herself so futilely. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... act, it falsely and arbitrarily and futilely and disastrously acts, just as would one who draws a circle in the sea, including a few waves, saying that the other waves, with which the included are continuous, are positively different, and stakes his life upon maintaining ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... marry again. Little Lucy talked no more than Miss Martha, and nobody dreamed that she sometimes wanted somebody to talk to her. Nobody dreamed that the dear little girl, studying her lessons, learning needlework, trying very futilely to play the piano, was lonely; but she was without knowing it herself. Martha was so kind and so still; and her father was so kind and so still, engrossed in his papers or books, often sitting by himself in his own study. Little Lucy in this peace and stillness was not having ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the remaining bulkhead, but was noticeably swallowed up in the absorbent blackness. He waited until its last reverberations had died, and then until its memory was hard to fix. He pounded futilely at the couch cushions, glared all about in a swift, intense, animal way. Then he relaxed, bent down and fumbled for the alcohol bottle. "What's the matter with you, out there?" he demanded quietly. "You waiting ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... ... God ... Knowledge." He had tried to convey this to the small creatures who had invaded his world, but they did not heed. Their ill-equipped brains were trying futilely to comprehend the ancient ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... saw a tangle of arms, and out of this tangle came a picture that would always remain vivid—Flint practically dangling at the end of Dennison's right arm. The rogue tore and heaved and kicked and struck, but futilely, because his reach was ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath



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