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whistle in the wind. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
whistle in the wind, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Pronunciation
Verb
whistle in the wind (third-person singular simple present whistles in the wind, present participle whistling in the wind, simple past and past participle whistled in the wind)
- (especially UK, idiomatic) To attempt something that is futile; to say something that is not heeded.
2009 February 22, Simon Caulkin, “However good the pay, it doesn't buy results”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 29 July 2018:[T]hey are expending more and more effort on trying to get right something that cannot, and should not, be done in the first place. […] Endless exhortations to "do it better" are, to put it politely, whistling in the wind.
2014 January 21, “Don't whistle in the wind?”, in DLH Marketing, UK, retrieved 29 July 2018:It doesn’t matter how strong your USP is or how powerful your value proposition, if the message isn’t reaching the right people you're whistling in the wind.
- 2018 July 9, Farouk Cassim, "Let’s do much more than whistling in the wind", voices360.com (South Africa) (retrieved 29 July 2018):
- veryone is doing no more than whistling powerlessly in the wind.
Synonyms
Translations
to attempt something that is futile
to say something that is not heeded
See also