wanhope

From Middle English wanhope, equivalent to wan- +‎ hope. Cognate with Scots wanhop, wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), West Frisian wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), Dutch wanhoop (“despair”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɒnhəʊp/

wanhope (usually uncountable, plural wanhopes)

1. (Britain dialectal or archaic) Lack of hope; hopelessness; despair.
   • Late 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Knight's Tale’, Canterbury Tales:

     Wel oughte I sterve in wanhope and distresse. / Farwel my lif, my lust, and my gladnesse!

   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter x, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVI:

     Thenne he ouertoke a man clothed in a Relygyous clothynge / […] / and sayd syre knyȝte what seke yow / Syre sayd he I seke my broder that I sawe within a whyle beten with two knyghtes / A Bors discomforte yow not / ne falle in to no wanhope / for I shall telle you tydynges suche as they ben / for truly he is dede

   • 1898, Georgiana Lea Morril, editor, Speculum Gy de Warewyke: An English Poem, page 57:

     Wanhope: a fine English word, suggesting unhope of Langland's story of the cats and the mice, and described in Ipotis, […]

   • 1991, Vladimir Ivir, Damir Kalogjera, editor, Languages in Contact and Contrast, →ISBN, page 411:

     If […] such good old English words as inwit and wanhope should be rehabilitated (and they have been pushing up their heads for thirty years), we should gain a great deal. (Collected essays, 1928, III.68)

   • 2007, Michael D. C. Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia: scholarship and critical assessment:

     Both despair and wanhope are generally defined as a complete loss or lack of hope and being overcome by sense of futility or defeat.

2. Vain hope; overconfidence; delusion.

• Middle English Dictionary Entry - wanhope