unhope means absence or lack of hope; hopelessness; despair. It carries an Arena rating of 1468, earned across 40 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, unhope ranks #130 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #2,823 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #3,732 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,981 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound.
Why “unhope” is a great word
UNHOPE — [Noun] The absolute absence of hope. From Middle English unhope (c. 1225), equivalent to the prefix un- (expressing negation or absence) + hope. Unlike "despair," which implies an active, anguished grief over lost hope, or "pessimism," which suggests a negative expectation of the future, unhope is the stark, neutral void where hope is not present. It is the empty space where a rope has not hung for a very long time; the silence in a room after a clock's ticking has ceased, unnoticed; the blank, indifferent sky on a morning that simply will not matter. It is the quiet, terminal geography of a world from which possibility has simply departed.
Etymology
From Middle English unhope, equivalent to un- + hope.
noun
- Absence or lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.e.g.“Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all
Waits in unhope.” — 1902, Thomas Hardy, In Tenebris I:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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