wanhope means lack of hope; hopelessness; despair. It carries an Arena rating of 1651, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, wanhope ranks #1,162 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,521 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #2,102 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #2,206 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
wanhope is pronounced /ˈwɒnhəʊp/.
Why “wanhope” is a great word
WANHOPE — [Noun] A state of despair or hopelessness, or a vain and delusive hope. From Middle English wanhope, from the prefix wan- (meaning "lacking, deficient") + hope. Unlike "despair," which is a stark terminus of feeling, or "optimism," a confident forward gaze, wanhope occupies the murky ground where a deficient hope curdles into its own agent of anguish. It is the barren vigil at a silent sickbed, the frantic scanning of an empty horizon for a sail, the peculiar warmth of a fire built from the last sticks of furniture in a house already condemned—the quiet tragedy of a hope you cannot quite stop nursing.
Etymology
From Middle English wanhope, equivalent to wan- + hope. Cognate with Scots wanhop, wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), West Frisian wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), Dutch wanhoop (“despair”).
noun
- Lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.e.g.“Wanhope: a fine English word, suggesting unhope of Langland's story of the cats and the mice, and described in Ipotis,[…]” — 1898, Georgiana Lea Morril, editor, Speculum Gy de Warewyke: An English Poem, page 57:
- Vain hope; overconfidence; delusion.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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