Word.ws English Dictionary

wanhope

UK/ˈwɒnhəʊp/US/ˈwɑnhoʊp/

wanhope noun: lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.

Noun

wanhope (usually uncountable, plural wanhopes)

  1. (UK, archaic, dialectal, usually) Lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.
    • Wanhope: a fine English word, suggesting unhope of Langland's story of the cats and the mice, and described in Ipotis,[…]1898, Georgiana Lea Morril, editor, Speculum Gy de Warewyke: An English Poem, page 57
    • If[…]such good old English words as inwit and wanhope should be rehabilitated (and they have been pushing up their heads for thirty years), we should gain a great deal. (Collected essays, 1928, III.68)1991, Vladimir Ivir, Damir Kalogjera, editors, Languages in Contact and Contrast, →ISBN, page 411
  2. (usually) Vain hope; overconfidence; delusion.

Synonyms of wanhope

Forms of wanhope

pluralwanhopes

Origin of wanhope

From Middle English wanhope, equivalent to wan- + hope. Cognate with Scots wanhop, wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), West Frisian wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), Dutch wanhoop (“despair”).

Questions about wanhope

What does wanhope mean?
Wanhope means lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.
What part of speech is wanhope?
Wanhope is a noun.
How do you pronounce wanhope?
Wanhope is pronounced /ˈwɒnhəʊp/ (UK).
What is the plural of wanhope?
The plural of wanhope is wanhopes.

Words near wanhope in the dictionary

  1. wangtooth
  2. wangun
  3. wanguns
  4. Wangus
  5. Wangyi
  6. wanhope
  7. wanhopes
  8. wanhorn
  9. Wanhsien
  10. Wanhua
  11. waniand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wanhope (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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