Despondency

Definition: Despondency

Despondency

Noun

1. Feeling downcast and disheartened and hopeless.

Date "despondency" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1602. (references)

Synonyms: Despondency

Synonyms: despondence (n), disconsolateness (n), heartsickness (n). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Dejection	Melancholy; sadness; Adjective: il penseroso, melancholia, dismals, blues, lachrymals, mumps, dumps, blue devils, doldrums; vapors, megrims, spleen, horrors, hypochondriasis, pessimism; la maladie sans maladie; despondency, slough of Despond; disconsolateness; Adjective: hope deferred, blank despondency; voiceless woe.
Fear	Nervousness, restlessness; Adjective: inquietude, disquietude, worry, concern; batophobia; heartquake; flutter, trepidation, fear and trembling, perturbation, tremor, quivering, shaking, trembling, throbbing heart, palpitation, ague fit, cold sweat; abject fear; (cowardice); mortal funk, heartsinking, despondency; despair.
Hopelessness	Noun: hopelessness; Adjective: despair, desperation; despondency, depression; (dejection); pessimism, pessimist; Job's comforter; bird of bad omen, bird of ill omen.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Despondency

English words defined with "despondency": blue devils ♦ low spirits ♦ major depressive episode. (references)

Specialty definitions using "despondency": Grave ♦ Ladder, Lamp, Leaves, Letter ♦ Single. (references)

Domain	Usage
Tongue Twisters	Diligence dismisseth despondency. (references; author: unknown)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Author	Quotation
Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza	The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Jeremy Collier	How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson	I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Title	Author	Quote
Scarlet Letter	Hawthorne, Nathaniel	With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, be yielded himself to the physician, and was led away.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

"Despondency" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.82% of the time. "Despondency" is used about 85 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)	98.82%	84	36,109
Noun (proper)	1.18%	1	339,140
Total	100.00%	85	N/A

Expression using "despondency": blank despondency. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; 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 "despondency"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		dëshpërim (despair, desperation, despond, heartache, melancholy, pain). (various references)

Arabic		‏كآبة (bleakness, damp, dejection, depression, desolation, dreariness, gauntness, gloom, gloominess, grief, low spirits, melancholy, moodiness, mope, sadness, sombreness, sorrow, spleen), ‏قنوط (despair), ‏جزع (anxiety, craze, despondent, grain, impatient, solicitous, vein). (various references)

Bulgarian		униние (damp, dejection, despond, doldrums, droop, dullness, mopes, sadness). (various references)

Czech		sklíèenost (dejection, discouragement, low spirits, misery), melancholie (blues, dumps, gloom, melancholy), malomyslnost (megrims). (various references)

Farsi		غم (Grief, Remorse, Rue, Sorrow), حزن (Grief, Sorrow), تنگدلی (Chagrin), دلسردی , دل گرانی . (various references)

Finnish		epätoivo (despair, desperation). (various references)

French		consternation, abattement (dejection, demand, depression). (various references)

German		verzagtheit (despondence, downheartedness, pusillanimity), Mutlosigkeit (chill, discouragement, dispiritedness, faintheartedness). (various references)

Greek		μελαγχολία (megrims, melancholia, melancholy, sadness, sombreness), αποθάρρυνση (damp, dejection, demoralization, discouragement), δειλίασμα. (various references)

Hebrew		יאוש (dejection, despair, desperation). (various references)

Hungarian		reménytelenség, csüggedés (loss of hope). (various references)

Indonesian		kesedihan (anguish, sadness), kemurungan (melancholy), kegundahan (dejection, depression). (various references)

Italian		abbattimento (breakdown, compulsory slaughter, cutting, dejection, depression, depressiveness, doldrums, fall, felling, felling of timber, getting, killing, knocking down, lodging, mope, quarrying, removal, slaughter, stoping, timber-cutting, tree felling, work, working). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		落胆 (dejection, discouragement). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		きょ� つか�", らくた�" (dejection, discouragement). (various references)

Norwegian		motløshet. (various references)

Pig Latin		espondencyday

Portuguese		desânimo (chill, damp, dejection, depression, despond, discouraging, dismay, megrims, moped, prostration), prostração (collapse, droop, drop, enfeeble, languish, prostration), abatimento (abasement, abatement, chill, collapse, damp, dejection, depression, discount, doldrums, drawback, droop, dropping, enervation, heaviness, languor, leeway, mope, prostration, rebate, reduction, release, relief, remission, sag, sagging, settlement, slumping, small landslide, stress, subsidence, weekness). (various references)

Romanian		deznãdejde (despair, desperation), desperare (agony, despair, desperation, hopelessness), descurajare (damp, dejection, discouragement, lowness), depresiune (basin, blues, bottom, cave, cavity, dejection, delve, depression, draw, hollow, melancholia, notch, pan, sag, scoop), demoralizare (demoralization, discouragement, doldrums), mâhnire (affliction, desolation, dismay, distress, grief, sadness, sorrow, trouble). (various references)

Russian		отчаяние (despair, desperation, despond). (various references)

Scottish		ao-dòchas (despair). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		potištenost (damp, megrims, mopes, qualmishness). (various references)

Spanish		abatimiento (abasement, dejection, demolition, depression, depressiveness, market, market dullness, market flatness, market slackness, market sluggishness, megrims, melancholia, melancholy). (various references)

Swedish		förtvivlan (despair, desperation). (various references)

Ukranian		смуток (damp, dejection, depression, discouragement, funk, shadow, sorrow), занепад духу, пригніченність. (various references)

Vietnamese		sự thất vọng (blue devils, chagrin, collapsable, dejection, despair, let-down, suck-in), sự ngã lòng (damp, depression, discouragement, disheartenment), sự nản lòng (damp), sự chán nản (chagrin, discouragement, disheartenment, dispiritedness, ennui, heaviness, lowness, low-spiritedness, vapour). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	contritio, contritione, contritionem, contritiones, contritionis, defectio, defectione, defectionem. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Misspellings
	"Despondency" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: descondency, desondency, despondancy, dispondency. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "despondency" (pronounced di'spÄ"ndunsē)
6	-n d u n s ē	ascendancy, ascendency, dependency, redundancy, tendency.
5	-d u n s ē	presidency, residency, stridency.
4	-u n s ē	absorbency, accountancy, agency, buoyancy, clemency, cogency, competency, complacency, Conservancy, consistency, constancy, constituency, consultancy, contingency, counterinsurgency, currency, decency, deficiency, delinquency, discrepancy, dormancy, efficiency, emergency, equivalency, excellency, exigency, expectancy, expediency, fluency, frequency, hesitancy, immunodeficiency, incompetency, inconsistency, inconstancy, incumbency, indecency, inefficiency, infancy, infrequency, insolvency, insurgency, interagency, irrelevancy, latency, leniency, malignancy, militancy, nonemergency, occupancy, poignancy, potency, pregnancy, proficiency, regency, relevancy, resiliency, solvency, stringency, sufficiency, tenancy, transparency, truancy, urgency, vacancy, vagrancy, vibrancy.
3	-n s ē	bouncy, chancy, deviancy, fancy, fiancee, mincy, Nancy, necromancy, teensy.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "c-d-d-e-e-n-n-o-p-s-y"
	-2 letters: condensed.
	-3 letters: condense, doyennes, ecdysone, pendency, seconded.
	-4 letters: decodes, decoyed, depends, deponed, depones, deposed, descend, despond, donnees, doyenne, dynodes, ecdyson, encoded, encodes, scended, seconde, seedpod, spondee, syncope.
	-5 letters: censed, codens, coneys, conned, copens, decode, decoys, denned, depend, depone, depose, donees, donned, donnee, doyens, dynode, eddoes, encode, epodes, neoned, nonces, opened, pended, penned, peones, ponced.
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.