despondency
UK/dɪˈspɒndənsi/
despondency noun: the loss of hope or confidence; despair or dejection.
Noun
despondency (countable and uncountable, plural despondencies)
- The loss of hope or confidence; despair or dejection.
- Not everyone succumbed to such nostalgia and despondency. Some saw the existential threat to Scots as a call to document what remained.2023, Clive Young, “chapter three: From Union to Devolution”, in Unlocking Scots: The Secret Life of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Luath Press Limited, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 93
- Synonyms:
- despair, desperation, despond, hopelessness, unhope, wanhope
- A feeling of depression or disheartenment.
- He kissed her brow, and left her. She watched him unconsciously, till the winding walk hid him from her sight, and then sank back on her seat, every nerve relaxing from its high-strained excitement into utter and still despondency.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 127
- Synonyms:
- melancholy, sorrow, blueness, tristesse, mirthless, blues, crestfallenness, dejection, depression, distress
despondency meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
despondency in Hindi
- despondency, heartsickness, dispiritedness
- मायूसी māyūsī
despondency in Tamil
- சோர்வு, மனத் தளர்ச்சி
despondency in Urdu
- despondency
- یاس yās
despondency in Malayalam
- despair, hopelessness, disheartenment
- വിഷാദം, നെെരാശ്യബോധം, ആശയില്ലായ്മ, പ്രത്യാശയ്ക്കു വകയില്ലായ്മ, നിർവ്വേദം, ഹതാശ
More languagesFewer languages
- despondency in Sanskrit
- साद sādá
- despondency in Tagalog
- hinayo, paghihinayo
Synonyms of despondency
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of despondency
| plural | despondencies |
|---|
Origin of despondency
From Latin dēspondentia, from dēspondēns + -ia. Equivalent to despondent + -ency.
Questions about despondency
- What does despondency mean?
- Despondency means the loss of hope or confidence; despair or dejection.
- What is despondency in Hindi?
- Despondency in Hindi is मायूसी (māyūsī). See Despondency meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is despondency?
- Despondency is a noun.
- How do you pronounce despondency?
- Despondency is pronounced /dɪˈspɒndənsi/ (UK).
- What is the plural of despondency?
- The plural of despondency is despondencies.
Words near despondency in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: despondency (page history and authors); मायूसी (Hindi) (page history and authors); despondency (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); یاس (Urdu) (page history and authors); despondency (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); साद (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-despondency.wav.
Cite this entry: “despondency.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/despondency. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.