DictionaryRoot: sperare
Latin

sperare

hope

1 / 3
A person sits dejected beside a collapsed carefully built model boat, shoulders dropped and hands hanging hopelessly, no readable packaging.
noun / verb

despair

dih-SPAIR/dɪˈsper/

Complete loss of hope.

Etymology

Here the prefix removes rather than intensifies: hoping becomes being without hope. The noun names that condition of hopelessness, preserving the central meaning of the underlying verb.

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