SELF-DESPAIR Synonyms: 76 Similar and Opposite Words

self-despair

noun

Definition of self-despair

as in sorrow

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Recent Examples of Synonyms for self-despair

Noun

With her toadstool-like jet-black perm and dark red lipstick, Haru is a striking presence, the sensuousness of her moves conveying both longing and sorrow.

— Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 25 Sep. 2026
Oakley and Reid lean so heavily into Elinor and Marianne’s crushing disappointments and the forces holding them back in a period of vast gender inequity, that their sorrows shove the characters’ more captivating qualities to the side.

— David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 21 Sep. 2026

Definition of sorrow

Noun

Beat shows how so many of the sounds that were prevalent in the mid-’90s contained a unique, end-of-the century sadness.

— Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork, 4 Oct. 2026
People can experience grief, sadness, relief, conflict or combinations of these emotions after any pregnancy outcome.

— Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 3 Oct. 2026

Definition of sadness

Noun

In the space of a few paragraphs, Ned will abandon and recover his child, bungle an extramarital affair, win and lose, experience ecstasy and dejection.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 24 Sep. 2026
Miller’s hands dropped quickly to his side in frustrated dejection.

— Kevin Acee, San Diego Union-Tribune, 31 Aug. 2026

Definition of dejection

Noun

And while there’d been some unhappiness between her and the Borden girls a few years before the murders — a disagreement over a property the family owned — there wasn’t the kind of outright resentment portrayed in the show.

— Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Rolling Stone, 23 Sep. 2026
The post and later comments arrived two months before the midterm elections, where Americans’ unhappiness with persistent high inflation has been a dominant theme.

— Kevin Breuninger, CNBC, 4 Sep. 2026

Definition of unhappiness

Noun

The question for me is whether or not Lloyd will also manage to capture the melancholy of a deceptively serious play, notwithstanding its reputation.

— Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 23 Sep. 2026
On the one hand, there’s a fascination with collective joy and the forms of vernacular invention that aspire to it; on the other, there’s an underlying melancholy that points to the inevitability of isolation, an epistemology of loneliness.

— Pablo Larios, Artforum, 1 Sep. 2026

Definition of melancholy

Noun

And for those elections to truly be free, ALL candidates must have the freedom to run and campaign without oppression, intimidation or persecution — starting with María Corina Machado.

— Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald, 29 Sep. 2026
Can an accurate story of a system of oppression be derived from sources created and preserved by the oppressors?

— Drew Gilpin Faust, The New York Review of Books, 19 Sep. 2026

Definition of oppression

Noun

The tone creeps into despair as the scales fall from Sutskever’s eyes.

— E. Alex Jung, Vulture, 2 Oct. 2026
The cumulative effect of the bowl’s ambient violence (robbery, assault, and overdose abound) amounts to an open-air despair not unlike Fox News-style depictions of California as a wholesale war zone.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 1 Oct. 2026

Definition of despair

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“Self-despair.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/self-despair. Accessed 5 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of self-despair

noun

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