Desperate means ready to try anything because hope has nearly gone. A desperate attempt, desperate for money, the situation is desperate.
It describes both the person and the situation, and it is one of the strongest words English has for either. Desperate for something means wanting it badly — desperate for a coffee — which is a much lighter everyday use. Note desperation, the noun, and the phrase desperate times call for desperate measures. And the adverb desperately is often just an intensifier: desperately sorry, desperately unfair.
1adjectivedesperateReady to do anything because there is almost no hope.
“They were desperate enough to try the last option.”
synonyms: frantic, at your wits' end
2adjectiveseriousVery serious and almost hopeless.
“The situation in the north is desperate.”
3adjectivewantingWanting something very badly.
“I am desperate for a cup of tea.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
desperate is a state of near hopelessness.
Latin desperatus is the past participle of desperare, to lose hope — de-, away, plus sperare, to hope, from spes, hope. Desperate literally means hope has been taken away, and despair is the same word arriving by a shorter route.
Proto-Indo-European
*speh₁-
Latin
dēspērātus
Middle English
desperat — desperate
English, today
desperate
Built from
From Middle English desperat (“desperate”), borrowed from Latin dēspērātus, perfect passive participle of dēspērō (“to be without hope”), see -ate. The noun is derived from the adjective or from the Latin source through substantivization, see -ate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA