Hopeless

How to spell hopeless

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hopeless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hopeless mean?

1. adjectiveHaving or offering no hope; impossible to improve, solve, or succeed at.

Hopeless in a sentence

• After three failed rescues the situation seemed completely hopeless.

• He felt hopeless about ever clearing the credit card debt.

Where does hopeless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from two native English elements, both inherited from Old English rather than borrowed. The root is 'hope', which comes from the Old English noun 'hopa' and verb 'hopian', meaning the expectation that something good will happen; its exact earlier origins are a little murky, but it is shared with Dutch 'hoop' and German 'Hoffnung'. The ending '-less' descends from Old English 'leas', which literally meant 'free from', 'devoid of', or simply 'lacking', the same element that gives us 'careless' and 'fearless'. Joined together, the word originally meant 'without hope', and from the 1500s it broadened to describe situations beyond remedy and, more casually, people hopelessly bad at some task. Because '-less' is always a single 's' followed by no doubling and the root keeps its silent final 'e', the spelling is regular; the only mild trap is remembering that 'hope' keeps its 'e' before the suffix.

How the word is built

• hope (root, from Old English hopa)
• -less (suffix meaning 'without')