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Despairing vs Disappointment - What's the difference?

despairing | disappointment |

As nouns the difference between despairing and disappointment

is that despairing is a mood or display of despair while disappointment is (uncountable) the emotion felt when a strongly held expectation is not met.

As an adjective despairing

is feeling, expressing, or caused by despair; hopeless.

As a verb despairing

is .

despairing

English

Adjective

(-)
  • Feeling, expressing, or caused by despair; hopeless.

    • Verb

    (head)

    • Noun

    (en noun)
  • A mood or display of despair.
  • * (Thomas Carlyle)
    • But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence.

    disappointment

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (uncountable) The emotion felt when a strongly held expectation is not met.
    • Choking back his disappointment after his own team's splendid wins against Liverpool and Aston Villa, he said: "I've got to be humble and say we were beaten by a very good side."'' — ''Today , News Group Newspapers Ltd, 1992
  • (countable) A circumstance in which a strongly held expectation is not met.
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2012 , date=May 5 , author=Phil McNulty , title=Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=For Liverpool, their season will now be regarded as a relative disappointment after failure to add the FA Cup to the Carling Cup and not mounting a challenge to reach the Champions League places.}}
    As the disappointments crowded in — the economy, Rhodesia, strife within the trade-union movement — tried the expedient of a semi-formal inner Cabinet, or Parliamentary Committee, as he misleadingly liked to call it.'' — ''Cabinet , Hennessy, Peter, Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1990

    Related terms

    * disappoint