What's the difference between cynical and despair?

Cynical


Definition:

  • (a.) Having the qualities of a surly dog; snarling; captious; currish.
  • (a.) Pertaining to the Dog Star; as, the cynic, or Sothic, year; cynic cycle.
  • (a.) Belonging to the sect of philosophers called cynics; having the qualities of a cynic; pertaining to, or resembling, the doctrines of the cynics.
  • (a.) Given to sneering at rectitude and the conduct of life by moral principles; disbelieving in the reality of any human purposes which are not suggested or directed by self-interest or self-indulgence; as, a cynical man who scoffs at pretensions of integrity; characterized by such opinions; as, cynical views of human nature.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Still, cynics might say they can identify at least one reason it all might fail: namely form.
  • (2) But he won’t call.” Allardyce is also cynical about an offer from Swansea to compensate around 300 Sunderland fans who had booked trips to Wales before the date change.
  • (3) And it was here, several years later, that I came looking for an answer to a question which has baffled many cynical film critics: how did a low-key prison drama, which was considered a box-office flop on its initial release, become one of the most popular movies of all time?
  • (4) I have not met someone as cynical as Museveni,” Besigye told a rally in eastern Uganda in January.
  • (5) The aim of this study was to determine how individual differences in cynical hostility and defensiveness interacted with situational demands to affect cardiovascular responses in a natural setting.
  • (6) It goes on: "In a reality of ongoing occupation, of solid cynicism and meanness, each and every one of us bears the moral obligation to try to relieve the suffering, do something to bend back the occupation's giant, cruel hand."
  • (7) The present study extended this previous research by evaluating urinary cortisol excretion during routine daily activities in a sample of high and low cynically hostile young men.
  • (8) If Deng is a 21st-century Becky Sharp, we should recall that for all her cynicism, Thackeray's heroine also possessed an indomitable spirit.
  • (9) Oil companies are sponsoring the arts around the world on an “epidemic” scale as a cynical PR strategy to improve their reputation, a new book argues.
  • (10) The British ambassador to Ukraine , Simon Smith, called Yanukovych's decision "an egregious piece of cynicism".
  • (11) Cynics will tell you Camra’s membership know all about identity crises – once the rebels of the 1970s, they’re now mostly older dads and grandads – purists upholding Camra’s “cask only” creed as sacred.
  • (12) The swift action of the US in withdrawing funding is likely to increase cynicism among Palestinians about the credibility of the US as a mediator between them and the Israelis.
  • (13) Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat campaign manager, accused Cameron of using the Greens to duck TV debates, adding: “Not since the photos of Cameron driving huskies have green issues been so cynically harnessed to Tory interest.” The broadcasters have proposed three one-hour TV debates, the first involving the Ukip, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative leaders, the second Lib Dem, Labour and Tory.
  • (14) Police officers resigned and politicians were embarrassed as the scandal erupted, but Scotland Yard – with dazzling cynicism – has reacted by trying to silence the kind of police whistleblowers who helped to expose the failures of their leaders; and ambitious politicians continue to dine with Rupert Murdoch.
  • (15) I'm always initially very cynical: who are these people, they look ridiculous.'
  • (16) To somehow use the upcoming 2012 Olympics as a reason to do this is, in my opinion, unforgivably cynical.
  • (17) Serving on the government's Renewables Advisory Board from 2003 to 2006, I witnessed what cynics could easily have mistaken for a deliberate campaign of delay, obfuscation, and the parking, if not torpedoing, of good ideas coming from industry members of the board."
  • (18) Swansea, for whom Jefferson Montero was outstanding, levelled when Gylfi Sigurdsson curled a sublime 25-yard free-kick into the top corner, after Kieran Gibbs had cynically brought down Modou Barrow, the Swansea substitute.
  • (19) Cynics would say it has taken the scientific community a long time to achieve very little progress in our understanding of HIV-mediated CNS damage.
  • (20) The aid cynics attacking the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on development assistance should take note.

Despair


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation; -- often with of.
  • (v. t.) To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
  • (v. t.) To cause to despair.
  • (n.) Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
  • (n.) That which is despaired of.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Crushing their dream of denying healthcare to millions of people will put them on that road to despair.
  • (2) It was the ease with which minor debt could slide into a tangle of hunger and despair.
  • (3) The behavioural despair test is a good complement for screening except for drugs having a beta-agonist activity, it appears that this test is dependent on functional relationships between alpha 2 and serotonergic systems.
  • (4) It became his task to use his literary art in an opposite way to Hesse, even though he despaired of what literature might achieve or of the capacity of rich Europeans to change.
  • (5) He has his job to do and he has to do it the way he thinks best.” On Saturday night, in a sign of the growing concern at the top of the party about the affair, one shadow cabinet member told the Observer : “The issue is already echoing back at us on the doorsteps.” At all levels, there was despair that the furore had turned the spotlight on to Labour’s difficulties as a time when the party had hoped to take advantage of the Tories’ second byelection loss at the hands of Ukip.
  • (6) Many have been driven to a suicidal despair that only those devoid of human empathy can fail to understand.
  • (7) In recent weeks a number of suicides apparently linked to financial despair have hit the headlines.
  • (8) "You can get six, seven or eight calls a day, which would add to anyone's despair and depression.
  • (9) Thus in your own words you have said why it was utterly inappropriate for you to use the platform of a Pac hearing in this way.” He suggested that many professionals were “in despair at the lack of understanding and cheap haranguing which characterise your manner” after a series of hearings at which Hodge has led fierce interrogations of senior business figures and others.
  • (10) For Foos, arousal often competed with despair and sadness at what he witnessed.
  • (11) | Hugh Muir Read more Wherever Labour people gather to discuss how to break out of the vice tightening around the party, answers fail amid sighs of utter despair.
  • (12) The presumed interrelation between early rearing conditions and the neurobiological status of the infant that might lead to increased risk for despair is not understood.
  • (13) Erik Erikson used the film character of Dr. Borg from Wild Strawberries to flesh out his life cycle conception of ego integrity versus despair in old age.
  • (14) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
  • (15) He is an innately optimistic character as well as a clever one, and a man who needs to persuade his party not to despair.
  • (16) The present report deals with the effects of CBZ on two animal models of depression, namely the potentiation of amphetamine-induced anorexia, and the behavioral despair model.
  • (17) That is the secret of his repetitive name (like Nabokov's criminal hero in his novel Despair: Hermann Hermann, a misprint for Mr Man Mr Man).
  • (18) On the one hand, he genuinely sees himself as the great liberator of the poor, the man who wept at Britain’s modern-day penury on Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate; on the other, he is the champion of policies that have driven some of the poorest people in society into despair.
  • (19) Ovariectomy changed the swimming time course and increased the rhythmical index of depression without other serious disturbances of the behavioural "despair" test.
  • (20) I wanted to rediscover my joy in writing, I wanted to leave behind the heaviness and despair of Dead Europe .