desperate

Pluraldesperates

1. 1
   adjective

   Having an urgent, overwhelming need or longing for something.

   Refugees arriving at the border were desperate for food and shelter.

   The startup was desperate for investment to survive the year.

   Similareager, anxious, hungry, frantic

   Note

   The sense that wants a complement: desperate for food and desperate for attention take a noun, while desperate to eat takes a verb. Without one, the reader is left guessing what is wanted. Unlike the despairing sense, hope has not run out here. The person is reaching hard for something, not giving up on it.

2. 2
   adjective

   Involving extreme, risky action undertaken without regard for danger because hope has nearly run out.

   The soldiers launched a desperate charge against the fortified position.

   She took a desperate gamble, betting everything on one final deal.

   Similarreckless, daring, rash, last-ditch, risky

   Oppositecautious, careful, prudent, calculated

   Note

   The sense of last resorts, and it attaches most naturally to actions: desperate expedients, a desperate effort. Applied to people, as in desperate killers, it means dangerous because they have nothing left to lose. Clorinda Matto de Turner's Birds Without a Nest (1904) states the cause plainly. People "made desperate by abuse" act under oppression, not from wickedness.

3. 3
   adjective

   Offering little reason for hope; extremely perilous or close to ruin.

   The economy reached a desperate state after months of decline.

   Trapped miners faced a desperate few hours as their oxygen dwindled.

   Similardire, grave, critical, perilous, hopeless

   Oppositehopeful, promising, secure

   Note

   Here the hopelessness belongs to the situation rather than the person, as in a desperate disease or desperate fortune. A useful test is to ask who feels it. A patient can be filled with despair, but the disease is only what gives reason for it. Pair this sense with words for conditions, prospects and states of affairs.

4. 4
   adjective

   Filled with despair; feeling that there is no hope left.

   Desperate and exhausted, the survivors waited for a rescue that might never come.

   He sounded desperate on the phone, as if he had given up entirely.

   Similardespairing, hopeless, despondent, forlorn, distraught

   Oppositehopeful, optimistic, confident

   Note

   Here the word sits closest to its Latin source, dēspērātus, from dēspērō, "to be without hope." Shakespeare could still be desperate of something: "desperate of obtaining her," in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, means having given up hope of winning her. The feeling attaches to people and to what they produce, so a desperate question and a desperate seriousness both carry it.

5. 5
   adjective

   Very great in degree; extremely intense or powerful.

   A desperate cold gripped the mountains through the long winter.

   The room fell into a desperate quiet as the verdict was read.

   Similarintense, extreme, severe, bitter, profound

   Oppositemild, slight

   Note

   Pure intensity, with nothing of hope or danger left in it. It sits before abstract nouns and turns them up: Thackeray's "desperate perfection" in The History of Pendennis, or BBC Sport's "six days of desperate disappointment." The noun supplies the quality and the adjective says only how much. That is why it can even modify something as welcome as perfection.

6. 6
   adjective

   Extremely bad; shocking or intolerable in quality.

   The state of the old hotel was desperate, with peeling walls and broken windows.

   He made a desperate mess of the simple repair job.

   Similardreadful, appalling, terrible, awful, shocking

   Oppositeexcellent

   Note

   A judgment of quality rather than of hope, and an old one. Shakespeare calls a woman "a desperate offendress against nature," and Macaulay writes of "the most desperate of reprobates." It also stretches to things that are merely awful, such as the desperate handwriting of a period or desperate taste in shampoo. In those uses the tone turns wry rather than grave.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   Someone in dire circumstances or at the point of desperation, such as a down-and-out person or an addict.

   The mission fed every desperate who showed up at its door.

   By midnight the alley was crowded with desperates looking for a place to sleep.

   Similarunfortunate, down-and-out, derelict, outcast

   Note

   An adjective turned into a noun, formed either from the English adjective or directly from the Latin source. It is countable, with the plural desperates, and names someone by their condition, such as a down-and-outer or an addict. The adjective needs a noun after it, as in desperate people. This form carries that noun inside itself.

8. 8
   adverbdialectalUS

   Very; extremely, used before an adjective to intensify it.

   The well ran desperate low during the drought that summer.

   He came home desperate hungry after working the fields all day.

   Similarvery, extremely, terribly, awfully, dreadfully

   Oppositeslightly

   Note

   A US dialectal use, in which the plain adjective form does an adverb's job before another adjective: desperate low, desperate hungry. It suits dialogue that wants a regional voice. In standard writing, use desperately instead. It still compares the way the adjective does, with more desperate and most desperate.

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