Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition


Wanhope

Wan′hopeˊ

,
Noun.
[AS.
wan
,
won
, deficient, wanting +
hopa
hope: cf. D.
wanhoop
.
[GREEK][GREEK][GREEK][GREEK]
. See
Wane
, and
Hope
.]
Want of hope; despair; also, faint or delusive hope; delusion.
[Obs.]
Piers Plowman.
Wanhope and distress.”
Chaucer.

Webster 1828 Edition


Wanhope

WANHOPE

,
Noun.
Want of hope. [Not used.]

Definition 2024


wanhope

wanhope

English

Noun

wanhope (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 9783110125740, 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; delusion.