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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, "lost cause" in particular: By then people had given up on him, practically treating him as a lost cause. My comments: This means people no longer had trust in him to succeed and probably stopped helping him in any way. A lost cause originally refers to a lofty goal or movement people believe in and are deeply committed to. People in China, for example, used to talk a lot about the Communist cause. Well, that smacks of talking big so let's use a smaller cause as example. To clean the local tourism resort of trash and garbage, for instance, is a small but worthy cause. Because of it, people are willing to volunteer and put in the hours every day, or every free day they have. But, as we can see, if the public, I mean, tourists do not learn not to litter, the clean-up campaign may become a lost cause, no matter how dedicated the volunteers are. You know, as soon as you pick everything up, uncaring tourists drop things to the floor. So, along with picking litter up and set up garbage cans everywhere, it's probably a good idea to pass leaflets educating the public about keeping the environs clean. Otherwise, the clean-up campaign is doomed, will remain a lost cause. Likewise, if a person is considered a lost cause, he or she is also doomed, i.e. hopeless. They perhaps don't have it in them to succeed. Perhaps they are not hard working enough, or perhaps they just don't have the talent. | 
