A drowning man will clutch at a straw American proverb saying informal
In the United States, people sometimes use grasp at a straw instead of clutch at a straw.
It has been a week since the day they broke up and although there is no hope left, she is still waiting for him to come back because a drowning man will clutch at a straw.
People are still holding on to the thought that he won't be fired, but with everything he did, I think it's like a drowning man trying to clutch at the straw.
Even when there was no positive sign showing that he could pass the test, he tried his best because a drowning man will clutch at a straw.
This idiom is often used to express that you should accept an unpleasant situation or event because you cannot change it.
Once something has been done, you can do nothing but face the consequences.
There is a verb clutch in the idiom, therefore we can conjugate tense for the verb.
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This phrase derives from 1382 when John Wycliffe translated the Bible in the English language. The phrase has been changed from clutch to catch to grasp ever since. The word straw in this phrase is used to show the very small possibility of finding success at using it because of its flimsy nature. But even a flimsy option is still worth trying or sometimes can just be taken as a desperate measure.