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. transitive, obsolete To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
- v. transitive, obsolete To cause to despair.
- v. intransitive, often with “of” 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. obsolete To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
- v. obsolete 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. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
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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bad memory
copper, anvil, oblique, thrust, shrine, welfare, farewell, bitter, faction, sectarian, tangible, spectacle and 134 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
( open list )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/macabrephantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 311 more...
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Sorrow is better than laughter; for b...
lachrymose, sorrow, melancholic, wail, mournful, sob, misery, wretchedness, anguish, agony, heartbreak, lament and 38 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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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 2369 more... -
Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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My First List
Words added to mark occasions of our lives
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haguremetaru's Words
floozy, mandalay, mandible, x, don't, will, ridiculous, funily, stuff, junk, doody, manning and 152 more...
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katiad's Words
exquisite, obnoxious, noxious, extravaganza, whirlwind, whirling, wild, spinster, existential, chaos, zephyr, blasphemy and 310 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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Scriptie: The Return of the King
i can't carry it ..., at the end of all..., it's done, reach, eagles, veil, grass, water, cream, strawberries, barley, summer and 200 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for despair.
anydelirium 'I can endure my own despair better than another man's hope.' -William Welsh Feb 18, 2008