Search the Dictionary

Destitute of hope; having no expectation of good; despairing. I am a woman, friendless, hopeless. Shak.

A sudden flight, as to escape creditors. This gentleman was so hopelessly involved that he contemplated a bolt to America -- or anywhere. Compton Reade.

The state of being condemned. His pathetic appeal to posterity in the hopeless hour of condemnation. W. Irving.

To drive into a position of great difficaulty or hopeless embarrassment; as, to corner a person in argument.

, adv. Hopelessly; despairingly; in the manner of one ruined; as, deperditely wicked. [Archaic]

To regard as hopeless; to give up. [Obs.] Bacon.

To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation; -- often with of. We despaired even of life. 2 Cor. i. 8. Never despair of God's blessings here. Wake.

Hopeless. [Obs.] Spenser.

Feeling or expressing despair; hopeless. -- De*spair"ing*ly, adv. -- De*spair"ing*ness, n.

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

A state of despair, or utter hopeless; abandonment of hope; extreme recklessness; reckless fury. In the desperation of the moment, the officers even tried to cut their way through with their swords. W. Irving.

Destitute of consolation; deeply dejected and dispirited; hopelessly sad; comfortless; filled with grief; as, a bereaved and disconsolate parent. One morn a Peri at the gate Of Eden stood disconsolate. Moore. The ladies and the knights, no shelter nigh, Were dropping wet, disconsolate and wan. Dryden.…

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…

Incapable of being extricated, untied, or disentangled; hopelessly intricate, confused, or obscure; as, an inextricable knot or difficulty; inextricable confusion. Lost in the wild, inextricable maze. Blackmore.

Not admitting relief; incurable; hopeless.

t to; to illuminate; to fill with light; to spread over with light; -- often with up. Ah, hopeless, lasting flames I like those that burn To light the dead. Pope. One hundred years ago, to have lit this theater as brilliantly as it is now lighted would have cost, I suppose, fifty pounds. F. Harrison. The sun has set, a…

Accustomed to, or employed in, desperate enterprises; hence, reckless; hopeless. "A perdue captain." Beau. & Fl.

ay to day; to defer; to postpone; to delay; as, to procrastinate repentance. Dr. H. More. Hopeless and helpless Ægeon wend, But to procrastinate his lifeless end. Shak.

aptive, or of captured property, by payment of a consideration; redemption; as, prisoners hopeless of ransom. Dryden.

incurable; irreparable; as, a remediless mistake or loss. "Chains remedilesse." Spenser. Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless. Milton.