DESPERATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does desperation mean? 

• DESPERATION (noun)
  The noun DESPERATION has 2 senses:

1. a state in which all hope is lost or absent

2. desperate recklessness

  Familiarity information: DESPERATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESPERATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state in which all hope is lost or absent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

despair; desperation

Context example:

courage born of desperation

Hypernyms ("desperation" is a kind of...):

condition; status (a state at a particular time)

Derivation:

despair (abandon hope; give up hope; lose heart)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Desperate recklessness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

it was a policy of desperation

Hypernyms ("desperation" is a kind of...):

foolhardiness; rashness; recklessness (the trait of giving little thought to danger)

 Context examples 

Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of flight.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

You will allow me, as a private individual, to decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of desperation in my professional capacity.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Ruth was not made happy by his reason for not coming, and the corresponding effect on him was one of desperation.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Courage and resource were penned in by desperation and numbers, while the great yellow sheets of flame threw their lurid glare over the scene of death.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Heaven forbid! Even if you were really criminal, for that can only drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"It's worse than boots, it's a silk dress," she said, with the calmness of desperation, for she wanted the worst over.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Then, in desperation, I abandoned the attempt to reef the mainsail and resolved to try the experiment of heaving to under the close-reefed foresail.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation and believing himself to have been already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)