Other forms: despairing, despaired, despairs
Despair is the dark state of having lost all hope. In despair, drive somebody to despair, a sense of despair.
It is stronger than sadness and different from depression, which is a clinical condition — despair is about a situation seeming hopeless. As a verb it takes of: despair of ever finishing. Do not despair is a standard reassurance. Note desperate and desperation, which come from the same root and mean acting wildly because hope is gone, and are much commoner in everyday speech than despair itself.
1noundespairThe state of having lost all hope.
“There was a quiet despair about the whole department.”
2verbloseTo lose all hope.
“She despaired of ever getting a straight answer.”
despair is a state of hopelessness.
Latin desperare is de-, without, plus sperare, to hope — the same root as the French espérer and the name Esperanza. Despair is literally the state of being without hope, with the Latin visible.
Proto-Indo-European
*speh₁-
Latin
despero
Old French
desperer
Anglo-Norman
despeir
Middle English
dispeir
English, today
despair
Built from
From Middle English dispeir, from Anglo-Norman despeir and Old French desperer (from Latin despero), or desesperer, from des- (“dis-”) + esperer (“hope”). See also desperate. Displaced native ormōdnes and ortrīewan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA