Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To lose all hope: despaired of reaching shore safely.
- v. To be overcome by a sense of futility or defeat.
- n. Complete loss of hope.
- n. One despaired of or causing despair: unmotivated students that are the despair of their teachers.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To lose hope; be without hope; give up all hope or expectation: followed by of before an object.
- Synonyms Despair, Despond. See despond.
- To give up hope of; lose confidence in.
- To cause to despair; deprive of hope.
- n. Hopelessness; a hopeless state; utter lack of hope or expectation.
- n. That which causes hopelessness; that of which there is no hope.
- n. Synonyms Despondency, Despair, Desperation. Despondency is a loss of hope sufficient to produce a loss of courage and a disposition to relax or relinquish effort, the despondent person tending to sink into spiritless inaction. Despair means a total loss of hope; despondency does not. Despair naturally destroys courage and stops all effort, but may produce a new kind of courage and fierce activity founded upon the sense that there is nothing worse to be feared. In this despair is akin to desperation, which is an active state and always tends to produce a furious struggle against adverse circumstances, even when the situation is utterly hopeless.
Wiktionary
- v. To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
- v. To cause to despair.
- v. To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation.
- n. Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
- n. That which is despaired of.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation; -- often with
of . - v. To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
- v. To cause to despair.
- n. Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
- n. That which is despaired of.
WordNet 3.0
- v. abandon hope; give up hope; lose heart
- n. a state in which all hope is lost or absent
- n. the feeling that everything is wrong and nothing will turn out well
Etymologies
- Middle English despeiren, from Old French desperer, from Latin dēspērāre : dē-, de- + spērāre, to hope; see spē- in Indo-European roots. N., from Middle English despeir, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French desperer, to despair.
Examples
“Consequently, to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, and yet to be in despair is not only the worst misfortune and misery — no, it is ruination.”
“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
“Among the ranks of reformers I have spoken to, a kind of despair is already setting in.”
“Silberman recently told me he was in "despair" about the Court.”
“A head-in-the-sand outlook which drives me to despair is when friends and online posters break out crime statistics for U.S. cities, e.g; "Washington DC is x times worse, so we must be safe in Michoacán.”
“His accomplishments were so pitiful he did this in despair for history to remember him.”
“Which leads to some of these writers giving up in despair almost from the beginning, and not even bothering with the self-publishing route.”
Kristine Kathryn Rusch » Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Giving Up On Yourself Part One
“The partners were in despair, though they appeared boisterous and jovial of speech and action.”
“Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and at the end of that time, in despair, Kent let his prisoner down.”
“His despair is "because of the way of the white man, which is without understanding and never twice the same.”
Le Milieu, Le Moment, La Race: Literary Naturalism in Jack London's White Fang
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘despair’.
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Eesily missspellable words
absence, abundance, accessible, accidentally, acclaim, accommodate, accomplish, accordion, accumulate, achievement, acquaintance, across and 420 more...
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bad memory
copper, anvil, oblique, thrust, shrine, welfare, farewell, bitter, faction, sectarian, tangible, spectacle and 132 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
phantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 294 more...
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emo words
feelings...blah, blah, blah, feelings...
forsaken, anguish, angst, sorrowful, dejected, depressed, disconsolate, heartbroken, genial, chipper, inadequate, helpless and 58 more...
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Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Down in the dumps, feeling blue? Here, then, is a list for you...
feeling blue, down in the dumps, blue devils, mulligrubs, mubblefubbles, melancholy, lugubrious, gloomy gus, eeyore, doleful, woeful, woebegone and 86 more...
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My First List
Words added to mark occasions of our lives
anydelirium 'I can endure my own despair better than another man's hope.' -William Welsh Feb 18, 2008