"timid attempts" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe someone who is making an effort to do something, but is not going above and beyond in terms of trying to succeed. For example, "Despite his timid attempts to fix the broken window, the repairs were unsuccessful."
His timid attempts to cut Hungary's stifling tax burden have had little impact.
Their timid attempts have kept power within narrow dynastic elites, be these the thousands of Saudi princes or the suited generals and apparatchiks who control Algeria's oil wealth.
Turkey has come to a point where the government, setting aside timid attempts at conciliation, seems intent on waging all-out war against any opposition to its policies.
Maura, who is listed at five feet eight inches and a hundred and forty pounds (but looks plainly smaller) scampered around the court, easily breaking U.V.A.'s timid attempts at a press.
President François Hollande's timid attempts to free them up a bit is provoking the current trades union militancy in which unemployed workers and their parents – by 60%, so polls suggest – are siding with the strikers, as they usually do.
There were timid attempts to discuss local sources of violence after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, given that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi natives, but they were drowned out by a wave of denial.
But oh dear, oh dear – this timid attempt to bring in the "new politics" simply showed the old politics at its worst.
It has also long had a reputation as being unmanageable: in 1999 its main campus was occupied for months by students protesting against a timid attempt to introduce fees.
(The curving internal street of the Time Warner tower, a timid attempt to engage the street life around Columbus Circle, echoes the pointless circular arcade that surrounds the lobbies at the base of Worldwide Plaza).
Shareholders have been stung by their apparent defeat at the hands of pro-management lobbyists late last year, when the Securities and Exchange Commission SECC), the main market regulator, put on seemingly eternal hold its (fairly timid) attempt to help shareholders propose candidates for election to the board.
This leaves the National United Front, which won most of the seats in last year's rather timid attempt at elections, and whose members the British authorities were seriously coaching in the arts of government, with only one seat, although it got nearly a third of the total votes cast.
