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Glite Dictionary
to hope against hope

to hope against hope

4 6.0
To keep wishing for something even when it seems not likely
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : esperar contra toda esperanza
  • Sometimes I just ramble and hope against hope that the listener deciphers it.
  • just hoping against hope
  • still hoping against hope
  • hoping against hope that somewhere

And yeah, so I'm just hoping against hope.

Examples

  • I ended up doing it anyway, hoping against hope.

    Blog text (28)

  • I sincerely doubt I will ever see his likes again, but one can always hope against hope.

    Blog text (6)

  • I thought this might actually be going somewhere, but I think I was hoping against hope.

    Blog text (28)

  • I'm hoping against hope that the man will just disappear.

    Top Hat (1935)

  • With all of the great tidbits in this interview, I was hoping against hope that he would talk about Trouble with Girls.

    Blog text (16)

  • There, pregnant, penniless and alone, she has been waiting, hoping against hope, as the hours tick by without a phone call.

    Heartburn (1986)

  • I waited every day for three years, hoping against hope that I would not be recalled, and hope prevailed.

    Blog text (10)

  • Children nervously search the threatening trees, hoping against hope these are isolated incidents.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • As far as that goes, he can only hope against hope that national politicians will reconsider the federal prohibition on pot.

    Blog text (23)

  • After losing his job, he is hoping against hope that he will be hired again soon.

Antonyms

to give up
∞ 1.2

To stop trying to do something or accept defeat

to despair
44 4.1

To lose all hope

How Hopeful

to hope against hope
  • Informal
4 6.0
to hope
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

hope against hope infinitive

Morphology

hope + against + hope

The construction repeats 'hope' with the preposition 'against', so a learner who knows 'hope' and 'against' can infer a paradoxical sense of hoping in spite of opposition or improbability. However, the rhetorical repetition and idiomatic nuance ('continue to hope when something seems very unlikely') are not fully predictable from the parts alone, so prior exposure helps; cross-linguistic parallels (e.g. 'against all hope') make it partially transparent.

Etymology

Hope against hope paints a simple picture: you hold hope while pushing against a wall of signs that say it will not happen. That's why it means 'to keep hoping even when something is not likely to happen'.