despairful
English edit
Etymology edit
Pronunciation edit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /dɪˈspɛːfəl/
- Hyphenation: des‧pair‧ful
Adjective edit
despairful (comparative more despairful, superlative most despairful)
- Characterised by despair; hopeless.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- […] wretches, whose vnhappie cace, / After lost credite and consumed thrift, / At last them driuen hath to this despairefull drift.
- 1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 5”, in The Island of Doctor Moreau (Heinemann’s Colonial Library of Popular Fiction; 52), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Possibility, New York, N.Y.: Stone & Kimball, 1896, →OCLC:
- The captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was alternately despairful and desperate.