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Disappointment vs Despondent - What's the difference?

disappointment | despondent |

As a noun disappointment

is the emotion felt when a strongly held expectation is not met.

As an adjective despondent is

in low spirits from loss of hope or courage.

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

    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