Dire vs Desperate - What's the difference?
dire | desperate | Synonyms |
Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous.
Requiring action to prevent bad consequences: urgent, pressing.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-06-14, volume=411, issue=8891, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Expressing bad consequences: dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.
(label) Bad in quality, awful, terrible.
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=December 10, author=Arindam Rej, work=BBC Sport
, title= 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 dire and desperate
is that dire is warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous while desperate is being filled with, or in a state of despair; hopeless.dire
English
Adjective
(en-adj)It's a gas, passage=One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains.
Norwich 4-2 Newcastle, passage=A second Norwich goal in four minutes arrived after some dire Newcastle defending. Gosling gave the ball away with a sloppy back-pass, allowing Crofts to curl in a cross that the unmarked Morison powered in with a firm, 12-yard header.}}
Quotations
* (English Citations of "dire")Derived terms
* direful * direly * direness * dire sisters * dire straits * dire wolfSee also
* voir direAnagrams
* * * ----desperate
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
