Word: availing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nearly a century the French dictionary Larousse (a sort of Gallic Webster's) defined "Greek" as meaning, among other things, roué, fripon, escroc-1) rakehell, 2) swindler, 3) crook. For nearly a century the Greek government has bombarded the Quai d'Orsay with complaints, to no avail. That, said Larousse stiffly, is the way Frenchmen talk, and that is the way they must be reported...
Golden wheat can grow tall and strong in the deep (200 ft.) black topsoil in the valleys of central India, but the wheat has little chance against the predatory kans grass. For centuries, India's ryots turned their bullock-drawn, wooden plows against the kans roots, to no avail. With less & less yield from each sowing, the peasant would at last abandon his kans-infested wheatfield, blaming his ill luck on Saturn, considered an evil planet by Hindus. Between them, Saturn and kans choked some 10 million acres of hungry India's wheatlands...
...their complacency. From the outbreak of the European War in September of 1939 down through December, 1941, the majority of students were more interested in Yale weekends than in the Battle of Britain. Pressure groups were working for both for and against intervention, but to relatively little avail...
...Time and change can naught avail To break the friendships formed...
...settled in The Netherlands and wangled huge sums of money from the Dutch War Ministry to finance a new explosive, "the Bourbon bomb," on which he was working. In Delft in August 1845, Naundorff fell mysteriously ill. The Dutch King's personal physician attended him, but to no avail. A few days later he died. The death certificate bore the name Charles Louis de Bourbon...