Definition

1. Adverb:
   • In a way that shows extreme despair or hopelessness: Used to describe an action performed with intense anguish, often as a last resort.
   • With great urgency or extreme need: Used to emphasize that something is critically or urgently required.

Examples of Usage

• Showing despair:

  • She looked around desperately for an escape route.
  • He called her name desperately, hoping she would hear him.

• Showing urgency or extreme need:

  • The team desperately needs a victory to stay in the competition.
  • This plant is desperately thirsty; please water it.

Advanced Usage

• "desperately seeking/wanting/trying": A common collocation emphasizing a frantic or intense level of desire or effort.
  • He was desperately trying to remember the password.
  • The company is desperately seeking new investors.

Variants and Related Words

• Desperate (adjective): Feeling or showing a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with, or needing or wanting something very much.

  • a desperate cry for help
  • They are desperate for money.

• Desperation (noun): A state of despair, typically one that results in rash or extreme behavior.

  • In desperation, he sold his car to pay the bills.

Synonyms

• Urgently: In a way requiring immediate action or attention.
• Frantically: In a hurried, excited, or chaotic manner, typically due to fear or anxiety.
• Hopelessly: In a manner suggesting no hope of success or improvement.

Related Phrases

• "desperately in love": Feeling love with intense, sometimes irrational, passion.

  • He fell desperately in love with her.

• "desperately ill": Very seriously sick.

  • The patient was desperately ill and needed constant care.

Adverb

1. in intense despair
   • the child clung desperately to her mother
2. with great urgency
   • health care reform is needed urgently
   • the soil desperately needed potash