#859. [Absence, want or loss of hope.] Hopelessness. -- N. hopelessness &c. adj.; despair, desperation; despondency, depression &c. (dejection) 837; pessimism, pessimist; Job's comforter; bird of bad omen, bird of ill omen.
abandonment, desolation; resignation, surrender, submission &c. 725.
hope deferred, dashed hopes; vain expectation &c. (disappointment) 509.
airy hopes &c. &c 858; forlorn hope; gone case, dead duck, gone coon* [U.S.]; goner*; bad job, bad business; enfant perdu[Fr]; gloomy horizon, black spots in the horizon; slough of Despond, cave of Despair; immedicabile vulnus[Lat].
V. despair; lose all hope, give up all hope, abandon all hope, relinquish all hope, lose the hope of, give up the hope of, abandon the hope of, relinquish the hope of; give up, give over; yield to despair; falter; despond &c. (be dejected) 837; jeter le manche apres la cognee[Fr].
inspire despair, drive to despair &c. n.; disconcert; dash one's hopes, crush one's hopes, destroy one's hopes; hope against hope.
abandon; resign, surrender, submit &c. 725.
Adj. hopeless, desperate, despairing, gone, in despair, au desespoir[Fr], forlorn, desolate; inconsolable &c. (dejected) 837; broken hearted.
unpromising, unpropitious; inauspicious, ill-omened, threatening, clouded over.
out of the question, not to be thought of; impracticable &c. 471; past hope, past cure, past mending, past recall; at one's last gasp &c. (death) 360; given up, given over.
incurable, cureless, immedicable, remediless, beyond remedy; incorrigible; irreparable, irremediable, irrecoverable, irreversible, irretrievable, irreclaimable, irredeemable, irrevocable; ruined, undone; immitigable.
Phr. "lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate" [Dante]; its days are numbered; the worst come to the worst; "no change, no pause, no hope, yet I endure" [Shelley]; "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon" [Milton]; "mene mene tekel upharson" [Old Testament].