despairing

Pluraldespairings

1. 1
   adjective

   Feeling or expressing despair, or brought about by it; without hope.

   A despairing cry went up from the crowd as the ship slipped beneath the waves.

   With a final despairing lunge, the goalkeeper got a fingertip to the ball.

   Similarhopeless, desperate, despondent, anguished

   Oppositehopeful

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of despair.

   Investors, despairing of a recovery, sold their shares at a loss.

   Despairing gets us nowhere, so let's make a plan.

   Note

   Participle and gerund both turn up in plain prose: investors were despairing of a recovery; despairing gets us nowhere. What is given up on usually follows of, as with the verb itself; taking it straight as an object, despairing a cure, is an obsolete use. Placed before a noun, as in a despairing look, the word has become the adjective meaning "hopeless".

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A mood of despair, or an outward show of it.

   Months of lonely despairing showed in his face when he finally came home.

   The poet's despairings fill a whole notebook, though he published none of them.

   Similarhopelessness, despondency

   Note

   The noun turns despair into something that can be counted, so it is at home in the plural: separate bouts of hopelessness, or the outpourings that show them. Carlyle, in Sartor Resartus, sets ragings and despairings side by side as the storms a soul hides under silence. Despair stays the name of the state; despairings are its episodes.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3