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Glite Dictionary
to slip into despair

to slip into despair

6.8
To start feeling hopeless slowly without noticing
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : caer en la desesperación
  • As the days went by and no answers came, it was easy for him to slip into despair.

Examples

  • She worried that her constant failures might cause her to slip into despair over time.

  • But surprisingly, I did not feel myself slip into despair.

    Blog text (4)

  • After losing his job, he began to slip into despair without even realizing it.

Synonyms

to despair
vsto slip into despair
44 4.1

To lose all hope

gradually start feeling hopeless without noticing it immediately

Antonyms

to uplift
23 3.2

To make someone feel happier and more hopeful

How Hopeless

to despair
44 4.1
to slip into despair
6.8
to feel down
15 3.0

Surface Forms

slip into despair infinitive
slipped into despair past
slipped into despair past participle
slipping into despair present participle
slips into despair third person singular

Morphology

slip + into + despair

The meaning follows directly from the constituents: 'slip' (move/decline), 'into' (change of state), and 'despair' (hopelessness), so a learner who knows these words can infer a gradual or inadvertent transition into hopelessness. This change-of-state construction is common and cross-linguistically familiar, making the expression predictable for a B1 learner.

Etymology

Slip into despair paints a clear picture: imagine you quietly slip into a dark chair called despair, moving slowly and almost without noticing. So, the phrase means 'to gradually begin to lose hope'.