trying

Pluraltryings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of try.

   They are trying to reach an agreement before the deadline.

   Trying to please everyone often leaves you exhausted.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. With be it builds progressive tenses (they are trying), and as a gerund it fills a noun's slot (trying is half the battle). What follows it changes the meaning. Trying to phone her is an attempt to get through, while trying phoning her is an experiment to see whether phoning works. The same spelling also serves the adjective of hardship.

2. 2
   adjective

   Difficult to endure; physically or emotionally demanding.

   Caring for two newborns at once proved deeply trying for the new parents.

   The expedition faced trying conditions as the temperature dropped below freezing.

   Similardifficult, hard, tough, demanding, taxing

   Oppositeeasy, undemanding

   Note

   Here the word sits at its heavy end: hardship that wears down body or spirit, built simply from try plus -ing. Its favorite company is times, as in Donny Hathaway's "Tryin' Times" (1969). Writers often soften it. In Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), typewriting with short sight is "a little trying", and at that strength it edges toward the merely irritating meaning.

3. 3
   adjective

   Causing irritation, stress, or annoyance.

   The endless paperwork made the whole process unusually trying.

   His habit of arriving late grew more trying with each passing week.

   Similarannoying, irritating, tiresome, exasperating, frustrating

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An attempt; an act of putting effort into accomplishing something.

   Every trying at the lock taught her something about how it worked.

   His first trying ended in failure, but he refused to give up.

   Similarattempt, effort, go (entry)

   Note

   Philosophers of action use it as a countable noun for the effort of will itself, kept apart from whatever that effort brings about. Hence the plural tryings. Andrew Sneddon's Action and Responsibility (2006) reports O'Shaughnessy's view that tryings cannot be specified except as would-be causes of the events they produce. Outside philosophy it is a literary touch: William Guss (2021) writes of "the tryings of finding a word."

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