Dictionary

respair en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (obsolete, uncountable) Fresh hope; recovery from despair.
   • Your new essay collection, On Witness and Respair, contains an unusual word most of our readers would have never heard of—“respair,” meaning “fresh hope.” Where did you find that? [2026 June 4, Jamilah King, “The Obscure Word That Helped Novelist Jesmyn Ward Process Her Grief”, in Mother Jones, →ISSN, →OCLC, retrieved 04 Jun 2026, Bold and italics in original:
   • Springing from his seat on a fallen tree, where he had sunk in his respair, he cried in genuine gladness: 1907, Roy Rockwood, “Put to the Test”, in Jack North's Treasure Hunt, Or, Daring Adventures in South America, Chatterton-Peck Company, page 105:
   • For a moment he remained sunk in a kind of dull and apathetic respair. 1914, George Allan England, ““You Speak English!””, in Darkness and Dawn: Illustrated, Boston, Massachusetts, United States: Small, Maynard, and Company, page 339:

Antonyms

despair

respair en · VERB

Meanings

1. (obsolete) To recover from despair.

Forms