wanhope

English

Etymology

From Middle English, equivalent to wan- +‎ hope. Cognate with Scots wanhop, wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), West Frisian wanhope (“wanhope, despair”), Dutch wanhoop (“despair”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈwɒnhəʊp/

Noun

wanhope (plural wanhopes)

1. (UK 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, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book XVI:

     ‘A, Sir Bors, discomforte you nat, nor falle nat into no wanhope, for I shall telle you tydyngis such as they be – for truly he ys 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^[1], 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.