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STRIVING
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An effortful attempt to attain a goal
Synonyms:
nisus; pains; strain; striving
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("striving" is a kind of...):
attempt; effort; endeavor; endeavour; try (earnest and conscientious activity intended to do or accomplish something)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "striving"):
jehad; jihad (a holy struggle or striving by a Muslim for a moral or spiritual or political goal)
Derivation:
strive (attempt by employing effort)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb strive
Context examples:
He worked more carefully, striving to be cool, though his heart was pounding against his chest and his hands were trembling.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
He even went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the other.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
He was always striving to attain it.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
He thought of everybody's claims and strivings, but his own.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Anne was startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined to suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could have caught.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Then I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all, myself—or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who is striving to recall something to his memory.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Marianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to encourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her behaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side, Elinor principally attributed that preference of herself which soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a groaning with grief and pain; and then striving again to get loose, they discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but by good luck I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
The road topped a low hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
