DESPERATION

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Desperate recklessness

Example:

it was a policy of desperation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("desperation" is a kind of...):

foolhardiness; rashness; recklessness (the trait of giving little thought to danger)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A state in which all hope is lost or absent

Example:

courage born of desperation

Synonyms:

despair; desperation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("desperation" is a kind of...):

condition; status (a state at a particular time)

Derivation:

despair (abandon hope; give up hope; lose heart)

Credits

Context examples:

Would they only have gone away, and left her in the quiet possession of that room it would have been her cure; but to have them all standing or waiting around her was distracting, and in desperation, she said she would go home.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Too soon did she find herself at the drawing-room door; and after pausing a moment for what she knew would not come, for a courage which the outside of no door had ever supplied to her, she turned the lock in desperation, and the lights of the drawing-room, and all the collected family, were before her.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The horrible thought that I might never see them again, that I might find myself abandoned all alone in that dreadful place, with no possible way of descending into the world below, that I might live and die in that nightmare country, drove me to desperation.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one effort more, and, turning to Elizabeth, said: Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

With a desperation that was madness, unmindful of the pain, he hurried up the slope to the crest of the hill over which his comrade had disappeared—more grotesque and comical by far than that limping, jerking comrade.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In desperation, all but ready to surrender, to make a truce with fate until he could get a fresh start, he took the civil service examinations for the Railway Mail.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake, as a striking and appropriate denouement.