desperate

Borrowed from Latin dēspērātus, past participle of dēspērō (“to be without hope”)

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdɛsp(ə)ɹət/

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desperate (comparative more desperate, superlative most desperate)

1. In dire need of something.

   I hadn't eaten in two days and was desperate for food.

2. Being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.
   • William Shakespeare

     Since his exile she hath despised me most, / Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, / That I am desperate of obtaining her.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”

   I was so desperate at one point, I even went to see a loan shark.

3. Without regard to danger or safety; reckless; furious.
   • Macaulay

     desperate expedients

   a desperate effort

4. Beyond hope; causing despair; extremely perilous; irretrievable.

   a desperate disease;  desperate fortune

5. Extreme, in a bad sense; outrageous.
   • William Shakespeare

     a desperate offendress against nature

   • Macaulay

     the most desperate of reprobates

6. Extremely intense.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

• desperation

• despair
• desperado

• departees

desperate

1. plural and definite singular attributive of desperat

dēspērāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of dēspērō

• desperate in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• desperate in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

desperate

1. definite singular of desperat
2. plural form of desperat

desperate

1. definite singular of desperat
2. plural form of desperat