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Despair vs Futility - What's the difference?

despair | futility |

As nouns the difference between despair and futility

is that despair is loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency while futility is the quality of being futile or useless.

As a verb despair

is to give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.

despair

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • (obsolete) To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
  • * Milton
    • I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted.
  • (obsolete) To cause to despair.
  • To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation.
  • * Bible, 2 Corinthians i. 8
    • We despaired even of life.

    Noun

  • Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
    • He turned around in despair , aware that he was not going to survive
  • That which is despaired of.

    • Synonyms

    * desperation * despondency * hopelessness

    Anagrams

    * aspired * diapers * praised

    futility

    English

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • (uncountable) The quality of being futile or useless.
    • His taking the bar exam for a third time was pure futility .
  • (countable) Something, especially an act, that is futile.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1803, author=Thomas Jefferson, title=Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him, his sophisms, futilities , and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? }}
  • *1843 , '', book 3, chapter XIII, ''Democracy
    • No man oppresses thee, can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shewn. […] No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go: but thy own futilities , bewilderments, thy false appetites for Money, Windsor Georges and such like?
  • *{{quote-book, year=1919, author=F. Scott Fitzgerald, title=This Side of Paradise, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=But men will chatter and you and I will still shout our futilities to each other across the stage until the last silly curtain falls plump! upon our bobbing heads. }}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2009, date=September 5, author=Robert Clark, title=Exhibition preview: Goya: Fantasies, Follies And Disasters, Manchester, work=Guardian citation
    • , passage=There are moments of profound existential angst, howls of despair at the absurd futilities of war and a sneering disgust at the soul-destroying wastage of human potential. }}
  • (uncountable) Unimportance.