Stories of war, death, fear and desperation do not have happy endings.
What does our desperation to get a nuclear deal at all costs say to the modern-day Iranian Solzhenitsyns rotting in Evin prison?
They were shouting with a mixture of fury and desperation about their families in Kobani, under siege just across the line.
Perhaps, instead, they had reached a desperation we can't quite fathom.
They allowed us to capture the complicated relationship between poverty and family bonds, between community pride and desperation.
But, nerved as he was by desperation, he found the task greater than he could compass.
At last in desperation you embody it in a poem, an essay, a story.
Burke inquired in desperation before the plaintive outburst.
Her desperation lent her invention; just in this one way he must not find her out.
Perhaps in desperation you may assume the role of cook yourself.
mid-14c., from Middle French désperation or directly from Latin desperationem (nominative desperatio) "despair, hopelessness," noun of action from past participle stem of desperare "lose hope" (see despair (v.)).