Grasping at Straws

Traced to Sir Thomas More's A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (1534), which describes a drowning man clutching at "a stick or straw" in sheer desperation. A straw was a deliberately chosen image of futility, flimsy, worthless, and obviously incapable of saving anyone from actually drowning, making it the perfect symbol for a plan with almost no real chance of working. The phrase stayed close to its literal, life-or-death meaning for well over a century before broadening into today's more general use for any last-ditch, unlikely effort by the late 1600s.