try as one may
try as one may phrase: however hard one tries; despite one's best efforts.
Phrase
try as one may
- However hard one tries; despite one's best efforts.
- It was an extraordinary thing that, try as we might, we could not finish our pipes at the same time.1890, J[ames] M[atthew] Barrie, “English-grown Tobacco”, in My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke, Boston, Mass.: Joseph Knight Company, published 1896, →OCLC, page 184
- 'It could afford to be materialistic,' said Birkin, 'because it had the power to be something other--which we haven't. We are materialistic because we haven't the power to be anything else--try as we may, we can't bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism.'1920 November 9, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter XXVI, in Women in Love, New York, N.Y.: Privately printed [by Thomas Seltzer] for subscribers only, →OCLC
Forms of try as one may
| alternative form | try as one might |
|---|
Words that rhyme with try as one may
Questions about try as one may
- What does try as one may mean?
- Try as one may means however hard one tries; despite one's best efforts.
- What part of speech is try as one may?
- Try as one may is a phrase.
Words near try as one may in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: try as one may (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “try as one may.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/try_as_one_may. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.