hopeless

hope +‎ -less, compare Swedish hopplös.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhoʊplɪs/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhəʊplɪs/
• Hyphenation: hope‧less

• Audio (US)

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hopeless (comparative more hopeless, superlative most hopeless)

1. Without hope; despairing; not expecting anything positive.
   • William Shakespeare

     I am a woman, friendless, hopeless.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 15, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.

2. Giving no ground of hope; promising nothing desirable; desperate.

   a hopeless cause

3. Without talent, not skilled

   He's a hopeless writer, but can draw very well.

4. (of an adverse condition) Incurable.

   She is a hopeless romantic.

   He is a hopeless idler.

• Nouns to which "hopeless" is often applied: case, situation, romantic, love, cause, person, despair, life, undertaking, alcoholic, man, endeavor, place, pain, agony, project.

• desperate
• unhopeful

• hopeful

• hopeless in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• hopeless in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• hopeless at OneLook Dictionary Search