different between despondent vs solitary

English

Etymology

From Latin despondere (“to give up, to abandon”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??sp?nd?nt/

Adjective

despondent (comparative more despondent, superlative most despondent)

1. In low spirits from loss of hope or courage.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:sad

   • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

Derived terms

• despondency

Synonyms

• crestfallen
• despairing
• disconsolate
• disheartened
• dejected
• downcast
• gloomy
• heartsick
• hopeless
• miserable
• sad

Antonyms

• cheerful
• hopeful

Translations

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /de?s?pon.dent/, [d?e?s??p?n?d??n?t?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /des?pon.dent/, [d??s?p?n?d??n?t?]

Verb

d?spondent

1. third-person plural present active indicative of d?sponde?

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?s?l?t??i/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?s?l?t?i/

Etymology 1

From Middle English [Term?], borrowed from Latin s?lit?rius.

Noun

solitary (countable and uncountable, plural solitaries)

1. (countable) One who lives alone, or in solitude; an anchoret, hermit or recluse.
   • 1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift [Avon ed., 1976, p. 24]:

     He brooded and intrigued fantastically. He was becoming one of the big-time solitaries. And he wasn't meant to be a solitary. He was meant to be in active life, a social creature.

2. (uncountable) Solitary confinement.

   The prisoners who started the riot were moved to solitary.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:recluse

Translations

Adjective

solitary (not comparable)

1. Living or being by oneself; alone; having no companion present
2. Performed, passed, or endured alone

3. Not much visited or frequented; remote from society

4. Not inhabited or occupied; without signs of inhabitants or occupation; desolate; deserted
   • 1769, Bible (King James Version), Lamentations 1.1

     How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
5. gloomy; dismal, because of not being inhabited.
6. Single; individual; sole.
7. (botany) Not associated with others of the same kind.

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

solitary

1. (archaic) The Rodrigues solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria), an extinct flightless bird.

Anagrams

• royalist