Word.ws English Dictionary

despairs

despairs is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 despairs

Words that rhyme with despairs

26 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about despairs

What is despairs the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Despairs is the third-person singular simple present indicative of despair.

Words near despairs in the dictionary

  1. despairfulness
  2. despairing
  3. despairingly
  4. despairingness
  5. despairings
  6. despairs
  7. despam
  8. despammed
  9. despammer
  10. despammers
  11. despamming

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: despairs (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: “despairs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/despairs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.