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DESPONDENCY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Feeling downcast and disheartened and hopeless
Synonyms:
despondence; despondency; disconsolateness; heartsickness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
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:
These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would compassionate me and overlook my personal deformity.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Somehow the kind act finished her despondency, and when all the rest went to show themselves to Mrs. Moffat, she saw a happy, bright-eyed face in the mirror, as she laid her ferns against her rippling hair and fastened the roses in the dress that didn't strike her as so very shabby now.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Somehow, I found that I had taken leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with a great change in my despondency about him.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I learned from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency, that it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I explained that I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine gender.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
One was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love; the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were moulded with the finest symmetry, yet his eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In a state of despondency, which I remember with anything but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much reference to myself (though always in connexion with Dora), I left the office, and went homeward.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
