endeavour

noun

1. British standard spelling of endeavor.

   “And these three: 1. the law over them that have sovereign power; 2. their duty; 3. their profit: are one and the same thing contained in this sentence, Salus populi suprema lex; by which must be understood, not the mere preservation of their lives, but generally their benefit and good. So that this is the general law for sovereigns: that they procure, to the uttermost of their endeavour, the good of the people.”

   “The like has been the endeavour of critics, logicians, and even politicians […].”

   “As we shall find it necessary, in our endeavours to bring electrical phenomena within the province of dynamics, to have our dynamical ideas in a state fit for direct application to physical questions we shall devote this chapter to an exposition of these dynamical ideas from a physical point of view.”

   “Universal Directory of Railway Officials and Railway Year Book, 1946-47. […] Although the preparation of the fifty-second edition of this well-known work proved a far from easy task, owing to the continuance of unsettled conditions in many parts of the world, the response to the endeavours of the publishers to obtain accurate and complete information has exceeded anything that would have been possible twelve months earlier.”

verb

1. British standard spelling of endeavor.

   “And such were Prais'd who but endeavour'd well.”

   “The other species of philosophers consider man in the light of a reasonable rather than an active being, and endeavour to form his understanding more than cultivate his manners.”

   “November 20, 1777, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, Debate in the Lords on the Address of Thanks It is our duty […] to endeavour the recovery of these most beneficial subjects.”

   “If you be affronted, it is better, in a foreign country, to pass it by in silence, and with a jest, though with some dishonour, than to endeavour revenge; for, in the first case, your credit's ne'er the worse when you return into England, or come into other company that have not heard of the quarrel.”