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Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [Obs.] I am desperate of obtaining her. Shak.

In a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety; recklessly; extremely; as, the troops fought desperately. She fell desperately in love with him. Addison.

Desperation; virulence.

view in all its aspects; to contrive busily; to devise; to plot; as, politicians agitate desperate designs.

To struggle; to wrestle; to strive desperately.

With extreme anguish or desperate struggles.

To beat, as with a club or cudgel; to treat with violence; to handle roughly. The desperate tempest hath so banged the Turks. Shak.

victory, the women became most courageous and proud, and the men waxed . . . fearful and desperate. Stow.

To become healed. One desperate grief cures with another's languish. Shak.

Aiming or willing to destroy; implacable; desperately hostile; flagitious; as, deadly enemies. Thy assailant is quick, skillful, and deadly. Shak.

a threatening manner; to threaten by some outward sign or expression. His look denounced desperate. Milton.

The act of despairing or becoming desperate; a giving up of hope. This desperation of success chills all our industry. Hammond.

xatious 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.

to 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 p…

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…

ic 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.…

sickle; 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.

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

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