Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Desperado |
DesperadoNoun1. A bold outlaw (especially on the American frontier). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "desperado" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1615. (references) |
Etymology: Desperado \Des`per*a"do\, noun; plural Desperadoes. [OSp. desperado, past participle of desperar, from the Latin expression desperare. See Desperate.]. (Websters 1913) |
Synonym: DesperadoSynonym: desperate criminal (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Blusterer | Noun: blusterer, swaggerer, vaporer, roisterer, brawler; fanfaron; braggart; (boaster); bully, terrorist, rough; bulldozer, hoodlum, hooligan, larrikin, roarer; Mohock, Mohawk; drawcansir, swashbuckler, Captain Bobadil, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Thraso, Pistol, Parolles, Bombastes Furioso, Hector, Chrononhotonthologos; jingo; desperado, dare-devil, fire eater; fury; (violent person); rowdy; slang-whanger, tough. |
Evil doer | Savage, brute, ruffian, barbarian, semibarbarian, caitiff, desperado; Apache, hoodlum, hood, plug-ugly, pug-ugly, Red Skin, tough; Mohawk, Mo-hock, Mo-hawk; bludgeon man, bully, rough, hooligan, larrikin, dangerous classes, ugly customer; thief. |
Rashness | Desperado, rashling, madcap, daredevil, Hotspur, fire eater, bully, bravo, Hector, scapegrace, enfant perdu; Don Quixote, knight-errant, Icarus; adventurer; gambler, gamester; dynamitard; boomer. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Desperado |
| English words defined with "desperado": Desperadoes. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Desperado" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. French (desperado), Swedish (desperado). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I'll tell you who sounds a little desperado (Seinfeld; writing credit: Andreas Lenze; Bea Schmidt) I got shooshed during Desperado. (Seinfeld; writing credit: Andreas Lenze; Bea Schmidt) | |
Lyrics | I'm a desperado (Shake your Bon-Bon; performing artist: Ricky Martin) | |
Movie/TV Titles | El Desperado (1967) Desperado (1956) The Desperado (1954) Jack McCall Desperado (1953) Montana Desperado (1951) | |
Song Titles | Desperado (performing artist: The Eagles) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
| ||
Theater & Movies | |||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Haliburton | A brave man is sometimes a desperado; but a bully is always a coward. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| "Desperado" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 80.00% of the time. "Desperado" is used about 15 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 80% | 12 | 101,599 |
| Noun (proper) | 20% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Total | 100.00% | 15 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "desperado"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | njeri i krisur (crackpot, madcap), kriminel i rrezikshëm, keqbërës i krisur. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | مجرم يائس, مجرم متهور, خارج عن القانون. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | смелчага (bulldog, daredevil, hearty, spartan), разбойник (bandolero, brigand, felon, footpad, highwayman, outlaw, pad, robber, scamp, scoundrel, villain). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 不逞之' . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | zoufalec. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | جنایت کار, ازجان گذشته (Desperate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | desperado, hors-la-loi. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Schurke (a rascally fellow, baddie, blackguard, bounder, cheat, crook, knave, miscreant, rascal, rogue, scoundrel, scoundrell, villain), bandit (badman, bandit, brigand, bushranger, bushwhacker, outlaw, rogue, scoundrel). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | κακούργοσ (criminal, felon, racketeer, ruffian, ruffianly, thug, yegg), τολμηρόσ (bold, daring, dashing, risque, spunky, stout). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | פושע כון לכל. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | bandita (bandit, brigand, gangsman, goon, Gunnel, high-binder, hold-up man, ruffian, thug, toughie, toughy). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | penjahat (bandit, criminal, delinquent, felon, gangster, scum, tough, villain). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | fuorilegge (illegal, outlaw), bandito (bandit, brigand, gangster, gunman, highwayman, outlaw, raider, ruffian). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | debejagh (desperate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | esperadoday malfeitor (evil-minded, malefic, malformation, mobster, ruffian, wrongdoer), bandido (bandit, bravo, gangster, hoodlum, outlaw, robber, ruffian, thug). (various references) desperat (abject, desperate, desperately, forlorn, gone, hopeless, madman, pathetic, pathetically, temerarious), escroc (bilk, biter, blackguard, blackleg, carpet bagger, charlatan, cheat, crook, double-dealer, duffer, faker, fraud, gambler, gamester, gouge, gyp, impostor, jockey, juggler, knave, mountebank, rogue, rook, scab, shark, sharp, sharper, snap, swindler), şarlatan (charlatan, coon, history, impostor, juggler, mountebank, quack), aventurier (adventurer, gold digger, knight of fortune, picaroon). (various references) головорез (bad man, cutthroat, cut-throat, ruffian, swashbuckler, swasher, thug). (various references) razbojnik (bandolero, brigand, haiduk, robber, scourer). (various references) desesperado (despairs, desperate, desponded, hopeless, in despair, last ditch, unattended, unpromising, unpromisingly), forajido (outlaw), criminal (criminal, felon, felonious, guilty, lag, raider, ruffian, ruffianly, underworld, villain), bandido (bandit, brigand, bushranger, mosstrooper, outlaw). (various references) desperado, vettvilling (madman), bandit (bandit, gun, gunman, thug). (various references) umutsuz kimse, her şeyi göze almış kimse, gözü dönmüş kimse, çılgın (berserk, bonkers, crackpot, crazed, crazy, delirious, demented, demon, demoniac, distracted, foolhardy, frenetic, frenzied, insane, kook, kooky, lunatic, mad, maniacal, moonstruck, nut, phrenetic, possessed, raving, rip roaring, ripsnorter, scatty, wild). (various references) урвиголова (madcap), відчайдушна людина. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "desperado": desperadoes, desperados. (additional references) | |
| |
"Desperado" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: desperandum, desperd. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "desperado" (pronounced de'sperÄ"dō) |
| 4 | -er Ä" d ō | Colorado. |
| 3 | -Ä" d ō | avocado, bravado, cruzado, Dorado, incommunicado, mikado, tostado. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-d-e-e-o-p-r-s" | |
-1 letter: respaded. | |
-2 letters: deodars, deposed, deposer, padders, reposed, respade, seedpod, speared. | |
-3 letters: adders, adored, adores, dadoes, deader, deodar, depose, dopers, dorsad, draped, drapes, dreads, eddoes, epodes, erased, eroded, erodes, operas, oreads, padder, padres, pardee, pareos, parsed, pedros, pesade, prosed, rasped, readds, reaped, redoes, repose, reseda, sadder, sarode, seared, serape, soaped, soaper, soared, spaded, spader. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-d-e-e-o-p-r-s" | |
+1 letter: desperados. | |
+2 letters: depredators, desperadoes, jeopardised. | |
+3 letters: depredations, eavesdropped. | |
+4 letters: overpersuaded, superabounded. | |
+5 letters: depersonalized. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)44 65 73 70 65 72 61 64 6F |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
|
| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
|
| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
|
Morse Code (1836) (references)-.. . ... .--. . .-. .- -.. --- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000100 01100101 01110011 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100001 01100100 01101111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)D e s p e r a d o |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0044 0065 0073 0070 0065 0072 0061 0064 006F |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
|
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)387185827184677081 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Rhymes 12. Anagrams | 13. Orthography 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
