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Despondent vs Diffident - What's the difference?

despondent | diffident |

As adjectives the difference between despondent and diffident

is that despondent is in low spirits from loss of hope or courage while diffident is (archaic): lacking confidence in others; distrustful.

despondent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • In low spirits from loss of hope or courage.
  • *
  • *: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.

    • Synonyms

    * despairing * disconsolate * disheartened * dejected * downcast * gloomy * miserable * sad

    Antonyms

    * cheerful * hopeful

    diffident

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (archaic): Lacking confidence in others; distrustful.
  • Lacking confidence in one's self; distrustful of one's own powers; not self-reliant; timid; modest; bashful; characterized by modest reserve.
  • *
    • Having therefore—but hold, as we are diffident of our own abilities, let us here invite a superior power to our assistance.
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1960 , author= , title=(Jeeves in the Offing) , section=chapter VIII , passage=At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade.}}