Sample Sentences for
despair
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

despair as in:  she felt despair

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    She rescued me from despair.
    despair = hopelessness or distress
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    I was in deep despair when she introduced me to a better way to live.
    despair = hopelessness
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    She was in a state of constant despair for the last year of her life.
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Show 10 more with 2 word variations
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    For a moment he froze, consumed with despair.  (source)
    despair = a feeling of hopelessness
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    (Fanfare, shorter but nearer) NORFOLK (Despairing) Oh, my God.  (source)
    Despairing = with distress or without hope
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    Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg's stomach.  (source)
    Despair = distress
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    The woman gave her a despairing sidelong glance.†  (source)
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    My writing has raised me somewhat from "the depths of despair."  (source)
    despair = distress (at not knowing how to improve a bad situation)
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    I thought I heard the sighs of a wild, despairing woman.†  (source)
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    McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair.  (source)
    despair = hopelessness
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    Red and Abby looked at each other for a long, despairing moment.†  (source)
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    Think bits and pieces of floating despair.  (source)
    despair = distress
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    And then horns were honking, their ah-000gahs sounding like despairing geese.†  (source)
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despair as in:  do not despair

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Don't despair. Next year will be better.
despair = lose hope
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Don't despair--help is on the way!
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    I never despaired and eventually I found a good job.
    despaired = lost hope
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    She despaired that anyone would believe her.
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Show 10 more with 4 word variations
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    Once, tired of writing and rewriting until Peter was satisfied, Val despaired and said, "Write it yourself, then!"  (source)
    despaired = had a feeling of hopeless ness or distress
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    "You mustn't despair!" cried Mr Wonka. "Nothing is impossible!"  (source)
    despair = give up hope
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    Another story: the emperor despairs of finding a horse able to run a thousand li.†  (source)
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    Nine hours after that bus rolled over, as all those stretchers were being carried up the hill, and everyone despairing—there was her hand coming up out of the window and everyone was shouting because there it was, a moving hand.  (source)
    despairing = losing hope
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    He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her.  (source)
    despaired = lost hope
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    My child, do not despair.  (source)
    despair = give up hope
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    But without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal.†  (source)
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    Act fourth displayed the despairing Roderigo on the point of stabbing himself because he has been told that Zara has deserted him.  (source)
    despairing = without hope
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    "He's fallen down in a fit, more likely," said Phyllis, "all human aid despaired of."  (source)
    despaired = lost hope
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    But as a reader, I did not despair.  (source)
    despair = give up hope
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despair as in:  she was the despair of the team

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Conditions that would have been the despair of most people, only served to motivate her.
despair = thing that causes hopelessness
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    Her schizophrenia and refusal to take medication is the despair of her parents.
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    These "new styles" were the despair of our young nieces, who were always trying to get us into brighter colors, shorter skirts, and lower necklines.  (source)
    despair = something that causes hopelessness or distress
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    When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene — his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to spread a copy of "Town Tattle." over the tapestry scenes of Versailles.  (source)
    despairing = causing distress and loss of hope
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Show 7 more with 3 word variations
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    If she had been six she would have been the despair of her parents.  (source)
    despair = something that causes hopelessness or distress
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    The answers to these prayers seemed often to come in the middle of the night: many mornings I would climb onto my stool to find the watch that we had left in a hundred despairing pieces fitted together and ticking merrily.  (source)
    despairing = causing hopelessness or great distress
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    It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs.  (source)
    despairs = things that cause hopelessness
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    It was the despair of Lieutenant Scheisskopf's life to be chained to a woman who was incapable of looking beyond her own dirty, sexual desires to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man could become heroically engaged.  (source)
    despair = something that causes hopelessness or distress
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    The Church of England, that finest flower of our Island genius for compromise; that system, peculiar to these shores, the despair of foreign observers, which deflects the torrents of religious passion down the canals of moderation.  (source)
    despair = something that causes hopelessness or great distress
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    After supper, urged perhaps by the impish humour which was the despair of his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked Philip and Hayward to come in for a chat.  (source)
    despair = something that causes hopelessness or distress
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    He was the despair—and the great hope—of his father confessor, whose life he daily made a hell with raging dialectics and a total lack of simplicity.  (source)
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