Sentence examples for usually in vain from inspiring English sources

Usually in vain, it must be said.

Our grandmother and great-aunts were obsessed with pinching and patting them; we'd go upstairs protecting them with our hands, usually in vain.

Far from Beijing, in the parched countryside, the missionaries sought protection - usually in vain - from timid or hostile local officials, or hid in huts and caves.

If the kids find their grandparents' language uncool, all of the well-intentioned outside help by linguists is usually in vain, except for preserving the language as a museum-piece.

Often, he and his assistant, Nesrin Wolf, spend mornings and even afternoons in their pajamas, trying, usually in vain, to reach the police or the District Attorney or the F.B.I. to discuss John Perry.

To compensate, we sometime try to impose order, assembling bright new shelves, porting boxloads toward attics and garages and pretending to weed out books no longer wanted, usually in vain.

My appeals to bypass moral evaluation have usually been in vain – and maybe rightly so.

The foreign media are outsiders usually trying in vain for a view inside.

I have watched countless doctors and nurses attempt to convey the need to make a decision to a family, but the advice is usually offered in vain.

Possession of a major sports franchise is typically a gateway to vast increases in an owner's personal fortunes, none of which is ever acknowledged by owners or commissioners and which players associations usually fight in vain to get sports talking heads to acknowledge.

In Bordeaux, Noverre's pupil Jean Dauberval premiered in 1789 La Fille mal gardée (The Ill-Guarded Maiden), usually called Vain Precautions in English, which became the first durable ballet comedy.