Word.ws English Dictionary

despaired

despaired is the simple past and past participle of despair.

Meaning of despair

Verb

despair (third-person singular simple present despairs, present participle despairing, simple past and past participle despaired)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
    • I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted.1644, John Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, London: [s.n.], →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To cause to despair.
    • Thinking of what I was despairing about despaired me further2019, Tim Dee, Landfill
  3. (intransitive) To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation.
    • We despaired even of life.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 2 Corinthians 1:8

See all 6 meanings of despair

Phrases with despaired

Questions about despaired

What is despaired the simple past and past participle of?
Despaired is the simple past and past participle of despair.

Words near despaired in the dictionary

  1. despaghettifying
  2. Despain
  3. Despains
  4. despair
  5. despaire
  6. despaired
  7. despairer
  8. despairers
  9. despairest
  10. despaireth
  11. despairful

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: despaired (page history and authors); despair (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “despaired.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/despaired. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.