desperate
adjectiveadverbnouncommon in dialogue
- Canada//ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɪt//
- //ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɪt//
- /[ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɛt]/
In dire need (of something); having a dire need or desire.
adjective
- 1
In dire need (of something); having a dire need or desire.
I hadn't eaten in two days and was desperate for food.
desperate to eat; desperate for attention
- 2
Being filled with, or in a state of, despair; hopeless.
I was so desperate at one point, I even went to see a loan shark.
Since his exile she hath despised me most, Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, That I am desperate of obtaining her.
“[…] 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.”
But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater.
- 3
Beyond hope, leaving little reason for hope; causing despair; extremely perilous.
a desperate disease; desperate fortune
- 4
Involving or employing extreme measures, without regard to danger or safety; reckless due to hopelessness.
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.
“I knew very well that when the Peruvian Indian does anything wrong it is because he is forced to it by oppression and made desperate by abuse,” replied Lucia.
Humankind's global integration makes biological combat a weapon of choice for desperate killers, who are either suicidal or intend to infect others […]
He dove into the rushing waters in a desperate effort to save her life.
- 5
Extremely bad; outrageous, shocking; intolerable.
a desperate offendress against nature
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.
The letters which were of most importance were in half a dozen languages and in the desperate handwriting of the period. Eminent men in that age thought it - like Hamlet - a baseness to write fair. Often at the end of a page I have[…]
She pictured having a boyfriend over and losing him when he saw her desperate taste in shampoo; however, the chances of that happening were slim.
- 6
Intense; extremely intense.
She enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her.
For Liverpool, it capped six days of desperate disappointment after missing out on the Premier League to Manchester City by a single point then losing to this experienced, street-smart Real team.
Etymology
From Middle English desperat(e) (“desperate”), borrowed from Latin dēspērātus, perfect passive participle of dēspērō (“to be without hope”), see -ate (adjective-forming suffix). The noun is derived from the adjective or from the Latin source through substantivization, see -ate (noun-forming suffix).
adverb
- 1
Desperately.
noun
- 1
A person in desperate circumstances or who is at the point of desperation, such as a down-and-outer, addict, etc.
Forms
- plural
- desperates
- comparative
- more desperate, desperater
- superlative
- most desperate, desperatest
desperate · In dire need (of something); having a dire need or desire.
desperately · In a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety;…desperation · The act of despairing or becoming desperate; a giving up of…despicable · Fit or deserving to be despised; contemptible; mean.