Word.ws English Dictionary

desperately

Syllables: des·per·ate·ly/ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹət.li/

desperately adverb: in a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety; recklessly.

Adverb

desperately (comparative more desperately, superlative most desperately)

  1. In a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety; recklessly.
    • She desperately grabbed at the nearby branches as she heard the branch she was standing on start to snap.
    • I could desperately do with some coffee right now.
  2. extremely
    • The race for silver medal was desperately close, they needed a photo finish to separate the runners.
    • They would be surprised to discover that we're all actually fighting for the same thing; that is, the sacredness of human love. The trouble is, they have almost every one of their facts totally and desperately wrong. Those who would lecture us on the "immorality" of our lives don't know the first...1991 February 11, Jeffery R. Nickel, “Going To The Chapel”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 29, page 9

desperately meaning in Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

desperately in Urdu

بےجگری سے

desperately in Bengali

মরিয়াভাবে

desperately in Malayalam

in despair, in desperation, despairingly
തീവനെെരാശ്യത്തോടെ, നിരാശപ്പെട്ട്, ആശയറ്റ്, ഗതികെട്ട്, നെെരാശ്യദ്യോതകമായി, ആശവെടിഞ്ഞ്
gravely, seriously, critically
ഗുരുതരമായി, കാര്യമായി, വളരെ, ഭരം, ആപൽസന്ധിയിൽ, ഉത്കണ്ഠാജനകമായി
urgently, pressingly, intensely
ചെയ്തേ മതിയാകൂ എന്ന സ്ഥിതിയിൽ, ജറൂർ, അടിയന്തരമായി, അത്യാവശ്യമായി, തീവ്രമായി, എവ്വിധമെങ്കിലും

Examples of desperately in a sentence

  • The patient, who lumbers painfully, has a question: She desperately wants a knee replacement, but doesn’t understand why three doctors have rejected her.2007 August 21, Jan Hoffman, “Soldiering On, Home to Home, in a Squeezed Health System”, in The New York Times:
  • The trouble is, they have almost every one of their facts totally and desperately wrong.1991 February 11, Jeffery R. Nickel, “Going To The Chapel”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 29, page 9:

All 40 example sentences with desperately

Forms of desperately

comparativemore desperately
superlativemost desperately

Origin of desperately

From desperate + -ly.

Questions about desperately

What does desperately mean?
Desperately means in a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety; recklessly.
What is desperately in Urdu?
Desperately in Urdu is بےجگری سے. See Desperately meaning in Urdu.
How do you use desperately in a sentence?
The patient, who lumbers painfully, has a question: She desperately wants a knee replacement, but doesn’t understand why three doctors have rejected her.
What part of speech is desperately?
Desperately is an adverb.
How do you pronounce desperately?
Desperately is pronounced /ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹət.li/.

Words near desperately in the dictionary

  1. desperadoism
  2. desperados
  3. desperate
  4. desperate times call for desperate measures
  5. desperate times require desperate measures
  6. desperately
  7. desperateness
  8. desperater
  9. desperates
  10. desperatest
  11. desperation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: desperately (page history and authors); desperately (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); desperately (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); desperately (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-desperately.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-desperately.wav.

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