despondent

English

Etymology

From Latin dēspondēns, from the verb despondere (“to give up, to abandon”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈspɒndənt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Adjective

despondent (comparative more despondent, superlative most despondent)

1. In low spirits from loss of hope or courage.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:sad

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., , , →OCLC, page 0056:

     Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

   • 2022 December 21, Nico Grant, Cade Metz, quoting Sridhar Ramaswamy, “A New Chat Bot Is a ‘Code Red’ for Google’s Search Business”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “Last year, I was despondent that it was so hard to dislodge the iron grip of Google,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, who previously oversaw advertising for Google, including Search ads, and now runs Neeva. “But technological moments like this create an opportunity for more competition.”

Synonyms

• crestfallen
• despairing
• disconsolate
• disheartened
• dejected
• downcast
• gloomy
• heartsick
• hopeless
• miserable
• sad

Antonyms

• cheerful
• hopeful

Derived terms

• despondency

Translations

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /deːsˈpon.dent/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /desˈpon.dent/,

Verb

dēspondent

1. third-person plural present active indicative of dēspondeō