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Desperate vs Ingratiate - What's the difference?

desperate | ingratiate |

As an adjective desperate

is being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.

As a verb ingratiate is

(reflexive) to bring oneself into favour with someone by flattering or trying to please him or her.

desperate

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • Since his exile she hath despised me most, / Forsworn my company and rail'd at me, / That I am desperate of obtaining her.
  • * , chapter=16
  • , title= 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.”}}
  • Without regard to danger or safety; reckless; furious.
  • * Macaulay
  • desperate expedients
  • Beyond hope; causing despair; extremely perilous; irretrievable.
  • Extreme, in a bad sense; outrageous.
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • a desperate offendress against nature
  • * Macaulay
  • the most desperate of reprobates
  • Extremely intense.
  • Derived terms

    * desperation

    Anagrams

    * ----

    ingratiate

    English

    Verb

  • (reflexive) To bring oneself into favour with someone by flattering or trying to please him or her.
  • * 1849 , , Shirley , ch. 15:
  • [H]e considered this offering an homage to his merits, and an attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate herself into his priceless affections.
  • * 1903 , , The Way of All Flesh , ch. 58:
  • [H]e would pat the children on the head when he saw them on the stairs, and ingratiate himself with them as far as he dared.
  • * 2007 July 9, , " Why Maliki Is Still Around," Time (retrieved 26 May 2014):
  • He ingratiated himself with the Kurdish bloc when he stood up to aggressive Turkish rhetoric about the Kurdish border in May.
  • To recommend; to render easy or agreeable.
  • * , "Sermon XIII" in Miscellaneous Theological Works of Henry Hammond, Volume 3 (1850 edition), p. 283 (Google preview):
  • What difficulty would it [the love of Christ] not ingratiate to us?