at pains, be at

Also, take pains. Make a special effort or take extra trouble to do something. For example, Bob was at pains to make a good first impression and wore his best suit, or Mary took pains to make sure her speech would interest the audience. [First half of 1500s]

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Ajit	-	Indian, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali
Gasparo	-	Italian
Konstanty	kawn-STAHN-ti	Polish
Artur	ər-TOOR (Portuguese), ar-TOOR (Galician), AHR-tuwr (Polish), AHR-toor (German)	Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Polish, Russian, German, Estonian, Swedish, Romanian, Czech
Lori	LAWR-ee	English
CÉSar	THE-sahr (Spanish), SE-sahr (Latin American Spanish)	French, Spanish, Portuguese