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say it: di-SPER
despair is a noun and verb meaning "a state in which all hope is lost or absent". It carries 3 recorded senses.
a state in which all hope is lost or absent
“in the depths of despair”
“they were rescued from despair at the last minute”
“courage born of desperation”
the feeling that everything is wrong and nothing will turn out well
“they moaned in despair and dismay”
“one harsh word would send her into the depths of despair”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for despair come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.