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tious alternative or predicament; a difficult choice or position. A strong dilemma in a desperate case! To act with infamy, or quit the place. Swift. Horns of a dilemma, alternatives, each of which is equally difficult of encountering.

the mind, to the moral character and habits, to institutions, the state, etc. Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliances are relieved. Shak. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public counsels have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where per…

To make sharp or keen, figuratively; to incite; to exasperate; to goad; to urge or egg on. [Obs.] By such reasonings, the simple were blinded, and the malicious edged. Hayward.

To render more violent or bitter; to irriate; to exasperate; to imbitter, as passions or disease. Broughman.

The act of exasperating or the state of being exasperated; irritation; keen or bitter anger. Extorted from him by the exasperation of his spirits. South.

o drop on; to descend on. -- To fall out. (a) To quarrel; to begin to contend. A soul exasperated in ills falls out With everything, its friend, itself. Addison.

Destitute; helpless; in pitiful plight; wretched; miserable; almost hopeless; desperate. For here forlorn and lost I tread. Goldsmith. The condition of the besieged in the mean time was forlorn in the extreme. Prescott. She cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living. Thomson. A forlorn hope Etym: [D. verloren…

treatment or remedies (Med.), treatment or remedies of a severe character, suited to a desperate case. -- Heroic verse (Pros.), the verse of heroic or epic poetry, being in English, German, and Italian the iambic of ten syllables; in French the iambic of twelve syllables; and in classic poetry the hexameter.…

ickle; an instrument for cutting or lopping; a billhook. Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook. Pope.

Giving no ground of hope; promising nothing desirable; desperate; as, a hopeless cause. The hopelessword of "never to return" Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life. Shak.

cted with indignation; wrathful; passionate; irate; feeling wrath, as when a person is exasperated by unworthy or unjust treatment, by a mean action, or by a degrading accusation. He strides indignant, and with haughty cries To single fight the fairy prince defies. Tickell.

To provoke to anger or rage; to exasperate; to irritate; to incense; to enrage. It will inflame you; it will make you mad. Shak.

Set on fire; enkindled; heated; congested; provoked; exasperated.

To render furious; to enrage; to exasperate. Those curls of entangled snakes with which Erinys is said to have infuriated Athemas and Ino. Dr. H. More.

Very susceptible of anger or passion; easily inflamed or exasperated; as, an irritable temper. Vicious, old, and irritable. Tennyson.

To excite anger or displeasure in; to provoke; to tease; to exasperate; to annoy; to vex; as, the insolence of a tyrant irritates his subjects. Dismiss the man, nor irritate the god: Prevent the rage of him who reigns above. Pope.

Fig.: To begin to be excited; to grow warm or animated; to be roused or exasperated. On all occasions where forbearance might be called for, the Briton kindles, and the Christian gives way. I. Taylor.

was mood. Chaucer. Fortune is merry, And in this mood will give us anything. Shak. The desperate recklessness of her mood. Hawthorne.

ting two mortal hours. [Colloq.] Sir W. Scott. Mortal foe, Mortal enemy, an inveterate, desperate, or implacable enemy; a foe bent on one's destruction.

In an extreme degree; to the point of dying or causing death; desperately; as, mortally jealous. Adrian mortally envied poets, painters, and artificers, in works wherein he had a vein to excel. Bacon.