Hopeful

How to spell hopeful

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hopeful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hopeful mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling or expressing optimism that something good will happen.
2. nounA person who is considered likely to succeed in a particular field.

Hopeful in a sentence

• adjective

  She felt hopeful about the results of her job interview.

• noun

  The young hopeful trained twice a day in preparation for the trials.

• adjective

  The team stayed hopeful even after the difficult first half.

• noun

  Each political hopeful delivered a short speech to the crowd.

Where does hopeful come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a native English formation built from 'hope', whose Old English ancestor 'hopa' meant a trustful expectation that something good will happen, joined to the suffix '-ful', from Old English 'full', meaning literally 'full of'. So a hopeful person was, quite plainly, someone 'full of hope'. The compound appears in English by the late 1500s as the noun 'hope' became attached to an ever growing family of '-ful' adjectives such as 'careful', 'graceful', and 'thankful'. The key spelling point is that '-ful' as a suffix always carries a single 'l', even though the free-standing word 'full' has two; the same single-l rule governs its many relatives. A modern second sense developed too, naming a person regarded as likely to succeed, as in a sporting or political 'hopeful'.

How the word is built

• hope (expectation of good)
• -ful (full of, adjective suffix)