a. [UN-1 7.]
1. Not affording grounds for hope; unpromising.
c. 1450. Mirour Saluacioun, 2871. For both thire sonnes tholed she the vnhopfulle bitternesse.
1599. Shaks., Much Ado, II. i. 392. And Benedick is not the vnhopefullest husband that I know.
1646. G. Daniel, Poems, Wks. (Grosart), I. 73. More valewing encrease From this vnhopefull Impe, then all the Store Hee had beside.
1663. Boyle, Usef. Exp. Nat. Philos., II. iii. 67. The unhopefullest season of the year, the winter solstice.
1785. Jefferson, Corr., Wks. 1859, I. 406. The lethargic character of their ambassador here gives a very unhopeful aspect to a treaty on this ground.
1858. H. Bushnell, Nat. & Supernat., vi. (1864), 183. There is nothing in it unhopeful, nothing to accuse.
1890. Spectator, 7 June. The chance of reading the great Minister a lesson in humility seemed not unhopeful.
2. Not feeling hope; despondent.
1850. Westm. Rev., April, 64. The fear which the mass, if uneducated and unhopeful, will always feel.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., II. xiv. I. 180. Jobst tried … to do some governing; but finding all very anarchic, grew unhopeful.
Hence Unhopefulness.
[1737. Bailey.]
1868. H. Bushnell, Mor. Uses Dark Th. (1869), 346. They become, in this way, a kind of mystery of unhopefulness.
