What's the difference between despondency and pessimism?

Despondency


Definition:

  • (n.) The state of desponding; loss of hope and cessation of effort; discouragement; depression or dejection of the mind.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After she hit the two-year mark, five-month mark, she’s been despondent.
  • (2) It was hard to reconcile Pistorius's despondent figure in black suit and tie and white shirt with the "blade runner" who thrilled stadiums around the world and became the first amputee to run in the Olympics .
  • (3) But actually what we felt as the days and weeks passed – me and Kelly and my father – was a sense of despondency, of being let down, of just sinking through the system.
  • (4) In 46%, the subject had expressed despondency over illness.
  • (5) There is a sense of despondency spreading in Pakistan.
  • (6) The value of Brazil's currency, the real, has ballooned since President Lula took power, leaving exporters despondent and leading Goldman Sachs to classify it as the most overvalued currency on earth.
  • (7) , became a battle manual for despondent Democrats after George W Bush’s second election victory.
  • (8) He told worshippers at Durham cathedral: "It is very easy to be despondent about the church.
  • (9) Pablo Simón, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University, argues that a fresh election and the attendant politicking could further alienate an already despondent electorate.
  • (10) In Spike Jonze 's Her, set in a near future LA, Phoenix is Theodore, a despondent, solitary writer whose life picks up when he falls in love with Samantha, a portable, artificially intelligent operating system who provides more than he could have hoped for.
  • (11) [It is] all the Ds: despair, depression, despondency.” “Chinese media are under a lot of pressure right now.
  • (12) Jose Mourinho: Rafa Benitez destroyed my work at Inter within six months Read more There wasn’t too much to get excited or despondent about in any of the displays in New York, Charlotte or here in Washington DC.
  • (13) Rob came very close to death many times, and I think part of James's despondency now comes from having saved Rob so many times, only to lose him in the end.
  • (14) They have been left despondent by Francis's occasional comments on the issue, in which he has generally defended the church while condemning the abuse.
  • (15) Despondent MPs tonight voiced fears that Britain may experience a milder ­version of the "clean hands" affair that brought down Italy's postwar political settlement in the 1990s.
  • (16) Strong was despondent over Bilibid but recovered and developed a noteworthy career in American tropical medicine.
  • (17) It has been demonstrated that a small proportion of women taking oral contraceptives develop a depressive syndrome characterized by despondency, tension, and changes in sex desire.
  • (18) A classic portrait of the grieving widower, his despondency did not surprise mental health professionals.
  • (19) For those who don't get the results they hoped for – and their chosen universities – the moments after the envelope are full of dread and despondency.
  • (20) It is easy to see why players bounce off Klopp and indeed it was tempting to wonder if Chelsea’s despondent players were casting the occasional envious glance at the German, whose energetic and engrossing touchline demeanour offered a welcome shade of light next to José Mourinho ’s dark scowl.

Pessimism


Definition:

  • (n.) The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for or tends to the worst, or that the world is wholly evil; -- opposed to optimism.
  • (n.) A disposition to take the least hopeful view of things.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ultimately, the judgments combine to make a particularly peculiar melange: among the plaintiffs there is a mix of economic pessimism and insecure nationalism with a shot of nostalgia for the Deutschmark.
  • (2) Since doctors are generally accepted as experts on health matters, their apparent undue pessimism about cancer prognosis is unfortunate.
  • (3) Behind the broad sweep of pessimism, it is worth thinking about how the "eurozone in crisis" story could eventually improve.
  • (4) Pessimism is my default setting," she told the Daily Telegraph.
  • (5) There has been widespread pessimism, usually without significant data, about the cloth-covered prosthesis, because of concern of cloth wear, hemolysis and other complications.
  • (6) The cognitive theories of depression emphasize the role of pessimism about the future in the etiology and maintenance of depression.
  • (7) Other negative emotions – self-pity, guilt, apathy, pessimism, narcissism – make it a deeply unattractive illness to be around, one that requires unusual levels of understanding and tolerance from family and friends.
  • (8) But Cameron veered from Libya to adoption, from apprenticeships to gay marriage, and on the economy, from optimism to pessimism.
  • (9) Indications of brain damage sustained during infancy are not grounds for pessimism on the part of the psychotherapeut.
  • (10) The pessimism about the psychiatric reform that emerges among some general practitioners seems to have more to do with the slow progress in creating intermediary facilities between hospital and region rather than an a priori opposition to the reform.
  • (11) To the widespread therapeutic pessimism we oppose various psychotherapeutic techniques for the treatment of non-psychotic compulsive phenomenal; for the manifestations occurring in the course of psychotic illnesses, the appropriate psychotropic drugs will be used in the first place, although they are of limited importance in these types of illness which oppose serious difficulties to all methods of treatment.
  • (12) In MAS, more than a few patients revealed a high anxiety level concretely, recognized psychosocial problems with loss of desire for treatment pessimism recording their prognosis, in addition to loss of QOL.
  • (13) One of the patterns of rigidity is an outgrowth of the lifestyle of pessimism, suspicion, self-reliance, self-discipline, determination, and endurance.
  • (14) The findings are discussed with respect to the mechanisms underlying predictive optimism and pessimism and the possible functions and implications of these predictive biases.
  • (15) But I don’t share the pessimism of a younger friend and activist who says: “I can’t see us being back in office this side of 2030.
  • (16) The questionnaire measured various attitudes concerning asthma and was used to identify those respondents reporting high levels of pessimism or stigma in relation to their condition.
  • (17) A kind of ironic pessimism – planning to fail – is a bit of a cliche in contemporary art.
  • (18) Among the 14 explanatory variables in the multivariate logistic analysis, family members' and friends' smoking, the place of residence, strenuousness of leisure-time physical activities, number of friends, rebelliousness, intelligence test score, and general pessimism were most strongly associated with the likelihood of being a current smoker.
  • (19) The climate models are unequivocal in their pessimism for the future.
  • (20) Compared with findings in manic subjects, the dimensional score for Harm Avoidance was elevated in all affective groups, "worry and pessimism" was elevated in mixed-state subjects, "shyness with strangers" was elevated in depressed and nonaffective subjects, and "attachment" was lower in depressed and nonaffective subjects.