desperateadj/ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɪt/

• 1

  In dire need (of something); having a dire need or desire.

  • I hadn't eaten in two days and was desperate for food.
  • desperate to eat; desperate for attention
• 2

  Being filled with, or in a state of, despair; hopeless.

  • I was so desperate at one point, I even went to see a loan shark.
  • Since his exile she hath despised me most, Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, That I am desperate of obtaining her.
• 3

  Beyond hope, leaving little reason for hope; causing despair; extremely perilous.

  • a desperate disease; desperate fortune
• 4

  Involving or employing extreme measures, without regard to danger or safety; reckless due to hopelessness.

  • In England his flute was not in request; there were no convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients.
  • “I knew very well that when the Peruvian Indian does anything wrong it is because he is forced to it by oppression and made desperate by abuse,” replied Lucia.
• 5

  Extremely bad; outrageous, shocking; intolerable.

  • a desperate offendress against nature
  • The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of reprobates, as a village Rochester, is, that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect.
• 6

  Intense; extremely intense.

  • She enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her.
  • For Liverpool, it capped six days of desperate disappointment after missing out on the Premier League to Manchester City by a single point then losing to this experienced, street-smart Real team.

desperateadv/ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɪt/

• 1

  dialectalDesperately.

desperatenoun/ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹɪt/

• 1

  A person in desperate circumstances or who is at the point of desperation, such as a down-and-outer, addict, etc.