Definition of whistle in the wind in English:

phrase

• Try unsuccessfully to influence something that cannot be changed.

  Example sentences

  • ‘Bertie may just be whistling in the wind with this one.’
  • ‘For years politicians and anti-drugs campaigners have chanted ‘Just Say No’ but they might as well have been whistling in the wind for all the effect this mantra, repeated incessantly, has had.’
  • ‘That means that taxes will be upped when the Government decides to up them, and Parliament can whistle in the wind.’
  • ‘But hoping that the breakthroughs of tomorrow will wash away the problems of today is just whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘However, unless the message is spread around the constituencies by the people on the ground, he may as well be whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘And the Wanderers' club skipper insists he is not whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘To act as if it were not so is a futile gesture, like whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘Famed liberal journalist and political commentator Bill Moyers recently remarked ‘I believe that journalism is all about writing in the sand and whistling in the wind.’’
  • ‘In the face of this growing terror, it may seem to be whistling in the wind to call for confidence.’
  • ‘Donald Dewar intervened personally to try to make this clear, but he too was whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘We are whistling in the wind if we think we can do it on our own.’
  • ‘I don't know offhand, but if you do not adjust for inflationary effects and the GDP you are whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘That's probably why we enjoy being told how bad things are, which means the bearers of good news like Mr Trichet and others are simply whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘But it is like whistling in the wind, because we are talking about a socialist Government that wants to hoard the money of taxpayers as it does not trust ordinary New Zealanders to make proper choices.’
  • ‘Polly and many others are whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘He was whistling in the wind and we all knew it.’
  • ‘However, they may be whistling in the wind, for they entrusted the precious volume to a tabloid journalist, of all people.’
  • ‘But he feels he may be whistling in the wind, with precious little hope of forcing a change in the short term.’
  • ‘Too often, ‘alternative’ medicine is just whistling in the wind.’
  • ‘Unless they can come up with a credible political and judicial scenario for the realisation of their objective, I fear that however strident their demands they amount to no more than whistling in the wind or baying at the moon.’