desperateness

1 6.7

A strong feeling of urgent need and hopelessness that makes you try extreme actions

noun
/ˈdɛspərɪtnəs/

: desesperación

In moments of desperateness, people often make decisions they normally wouldn't consider.

Examples

Why else would he have twice saved you from your own desperateness?

Psycho III (1986)
The desperateness of our situation becomes apparent when we reflect on the fact that only a community that is no longer truly a community can satisfy a self without a soul (fixed nature).

Academic text (1997)
Well, for Waters, "the wall" was this impassable distance between a stadium-level band and its audience, the whole desperateness of inability to reach out and connect...

Blog text (3)
His desperateness for food drove him to search through the trash bins.
The mother felt a deep sense of desperateness when her child went missing.

Synonyms

desperation

vsdesperateness

141 3.7

A feeling of no hope that makes someone take big risks

includes urgent need and willingness to take extreme actions

franticness

vsdesperateness

1 6.0

A strong feeling of worry that makes people act very quickly

emphasizes urgent need and readiness to take extreme actions from hopelessness

Antonyms

security

408 2.4

The feeling of being safe from danger or threat

stability

363 3.1

Being steady and not likely to change

How Desperate

despair

210 3.5

desperateness

1 6.7

anxiety

423 3.5

concern

∞ 1.5

unease

19 4.4

Surface Forms

desperateness singular

desperatenesses plural

Morphology

desperateness = desperate (transparent) = desperate + ness

Formed by the regular adjectival-to-nominal suffix '-ness' on 'desperate', yielding the state or quality straightforwardly.

Etymology

Desperateness comes from desperate, which breaks down to de- ('without') and sperare ('to hope') and is the same root as despair. So desperateness means being 'without hope' and feeling an urgent need or being willing to take extreme actions.