Anxious vs Desperate - What's the difference?
anxious | desperate |
Full of anxiety or disquietude; greatly concerned or solicitous, especially respecting something future or unknown; being in painful suspense;—applied to persons; as, anxious for the issue of a battle.
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*:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious , despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=19 *{{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 13, author=Alistair Magowan, work=BBC Sport
, title= Accompanied with, or causing, anxiety; worrying;—applied to things; as, anxious labor.
*(John Milton) (1608-1674)
*:The sweet of life, from which God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares.
Earnestly desirous; as, anxious to please.
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* (1800-1859)
*:He sneers alike at those who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager for reform.
Being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.
* (William Shakespeare)
* , chapter=16
, title= Without regard to danger or safety; reckless; furious.
* Macaulay
Beyond hope; causing despair; extremely perilous; irretrievable.
Extreme, in a bad sense; outrageous.
* (William Shakespeare)
* Macaulay
Extremely intense.
As adjectives the difference between anxious and desperate
is that anxious is full of anxiety or disquietude; greatly concerned or solicitous, especially respecting something future or unknown; being in painful suspense;—applied to persons; as, anxious for the issue of a battle while desperate is being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.anxious
English
(Anxiety) (Webster 1913)Alternative forms
* anctious (obsolete)Adjective
(en-adj)citation, passage=Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost. She took the policeman's helmet and placed it on a chair, and unfolded his tunic to shake it and fold it up again for him.}}
Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd, passage=But, with United fans in celebratory mood as it appeared their team might snatch glory, they faced an anxious wait as City equalised in stoppage time.}}
Usage notes
* Anxious is followed by for, about, concerning, etc., before the object of solicitude.Synonyms
* careful * concerned * disturbed * restless * solicitous * uneasy * unquiet * watchfulExternal links
* * English refractory feminine rhymesdesperate
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- Since his exile she hath despised me most, / Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, / That I am desperate of obtaining her.
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=“[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”}}
- desperate expedients
- a desperate offendress against nature
- the most desperate of reprobates
