DESPONDENCY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does despondency mean? 

• DESPONDENCY (noun)
  The noun DESPONDENCY has 1 sense:

1. feeling downcast and disheartened and hopeless

  Familiarity information: DESPONDENCY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESPONDENCY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Feeling downcast and disheartened and hopeless

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

despondence; despondency; disconsolateness; heartsickness

Hypernyms ("despondency" is a kind of...):

depression (sad feelings of gloom and inadequacy)

Derivation:

despond (lose confidence or hope; become dejected)

despondent (without or almost without hope)

 Context examples 

When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell, never, never again to rise.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee of the forecastle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his head, in an attitude of unutterable despondency.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

In his despondency, he concluded that he had no judgment whatever, that he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he was a self-deluded pretender.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to speak to him: the moment of Mr Elliot's appearing and tearing her away, and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or increasing despondency, were dwelt on with energy.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It was ages since she had had a moment's conversation with her dearest Catherine; and, though she had such thousands of things to say to her, it appeared as if they were never to be together again; so, with smiles of most exquisite misery, and the laughing eye of utter despondency, she bade her friend adieu and went on.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

For the parents who had taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Both men had lost hope—Johnson, because of temperamental despondency; Leach, because he had beaten himself out in the vain struggle and was exhausted.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)