desperate
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
Borrowed from Latin dēspērātus, past participle of dēspērō (“to be without hope”)
PronunciationEdit
AdjectiveEdit
desperate (comparative more desperate, superlative most desperate)
- In dire need of something.
- I hadn't eaten in two days and was desperate for food.
- Being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.
- c. 1590–1591, William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene ii]:
- Since his exile she hath despised me most, / Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, / That I am desperate of obtaining her.
- 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
- “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
- I was so desperate at one point, I even went to see a loan shark.
- Without regard to danger or safety; reckless; furious.
- 1879, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “GOLDSMITH, Oliver”, in The Encyclopædia Britannica […] [1], Volume X, Ninth edition, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, page 761, column 2:
- In England his flute was not in request; there were no convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients.
- a desperate effort
- Beyond hope; causing despair; extremely perilous; irretrievable.
- a desperate disease; desperate fortune
- Extreme, in a bad sense; outrageous.
- c. 1604–1605, William Shakespeare, “All’s VVell, that Ends VVell”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene i]:
- a desperate offendress against nature
- 1876, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “BUNYAN, John”, in The Encyclopædia Britannica […] [2], Volume IV, Ninth edition, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, page 526, column 2:
- The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of reprobates, as a village Rochester, is, that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect.
- Extremely intense.
- (Can we add an example for this sense?)
NounEdit
desperate (plural desperates)
- A person in desperate circumstances or who is at the point of desperation, such as a down-and-outer, addict, etc.
Derived termsEdit
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
filled with despair
|
|
having reckless abandon
|
|
extremely intense
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
|
AnagramsEdit
DanishEdit
AdjectiveEdit
desperate
- plural and definite singular attributive of desperat
LatinEdit
VerbEdit
dēspērāte
ReferencesEdit
- desperate in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- desperate in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
Norwegian BokmålEdit
AdjectiveEdit
desperate
Norwegian NynorskEdit
AdjectiveEdit
desperate