Pages

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Hopeful vs. Hopeless

Webster describes the word hopeful as:
1 : having qualities which inspire hope

2 : full of hope : inclined to hope

And hopeless as:
1 a : having no expectation of good or success : despairing b : not susceptible to remedy or cure c : incapable of redemption or improvement

2 a : giving no ground for hope : desperate b : incapable of solution, management, or accomplishment : impossible

Today I used the phrase "less hopeful" and I wondered what that really means. I looked for meanings of that phrase is both the words hopeful and hopeless. I've decided it has to be in some middle ground. So I'm curious--does anyone know what I'm talking about? That feeling when it's not that you've lost all hope or feel that things are "impossible" but a feeling where "full of hope" seems like a distant memory.

No comments: