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Woeful vs Desperate - What's the difference?

woeful | desperate | Related terms |

As adjectives the difference between woeful and desperate

is that woeful is full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity while desperate is being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.

woeful

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity.
    • How many woeful widows left to bow / To sad disgrace! — Daniel.
  • Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction.
    • a woeful event
    a woeful lack of restraint
  • wretched; paltry; poor
    • What woeful stuff this madrigal would be! — Pope.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    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

    Related terms

    * despair * desperado

    Anagrams

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