get blood out of a stone

Meaning: (idiomatic)To do somethingdifficult,frustrating, orpointless.Synonyms:get blood from a turnip,get blood out of a turnip,pull teeth,squeeze blood out of a turnip1864May –1865November,Charles Dickens, chapter 15, inOur Mutual Friend.[…], volume(please specify |volume=I or II), London:Chapman and Hall,[…], published1865,→OCLC:Bradley looked at the fire, with a working face, and was silent for a while. At last he said, with what seemed an inconsistent composure of voice and feature: ‘You can’tget blood out of a stone, Riderhood.’1919,W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XII, inThe Moon and Sixpence,[New York, N.Y.]:Grosset & Dunlap Publishers[…],→OCLC:"I suppose the law has some protection to offer them.""Can the lawget blood out of a stone? I haven't any money. I've got about a hundred pounds."

Examples:

EN: You've heard it said that you can't get blood out of a stone.
ES: Tengo sólo once segundos para presentarles a alguien.
EN: Someday I'm going to take lessons from you on how to get blood out of a stone.
ES: Algún día me tiene que enseñar cómo exprimir hasta las piedras.
EN: Can't get blood out of a stone, Vittorio! - Oh, no, huh?
ES: - "No se saca sangre de un nabo." - ¿Ah, no?
EN: I owe them 20 quid and they can't get blood out of a stone.
ES: Les debo 20 libras y no pueden sacarle leche a una piedra.
EN: They finally figured out how to get blood out of a stone.
ES: Ellos finalmente encontraron como conseguir sangre de una piedra.
EN: You can't get blood out of a stone, I reckon.
ES: No se puede sacar agua de las piedras. Lo lamento.
EN: The longer we stay in here, trying to get blood out of a stone, the longer she's got to wait
ES: Está esperando para verlo.
EN: You can't get blood out of a stone.
ES: No se puede sacar de la nada.
EN: You're more likely to get blood out of a stone.
ES: ¿Sangre de quién?
EN: You tell her you can't get blood out of a stone.
ES: Le dices, que no se puede sacar sangre de una piedra.
EN: It's like trying to get blood out of a stone.
ES: Es como tratar de sacar agua de las piedras.
EN: Why is it that trying to get information out of a man is like trying to get blood out of a stone?
ES: ¿Por qué obtener información de un hombre... es como tratar de sacar sangre de las piedras?
EN: And he says, "You can't get blood out of a stone, son."
ES: Y él respondió: "No sacas sangre de una piedra, hijo".
EN: I could get blood out of a stone, me.
ES: Podría sacar sangre de una piedra.
EN: Can't get blood out of a stone.
ES: No puedes sacar sangre de una piedra.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).