desponded

On the question being propounded whether he could go and find her, the page desponded and thought not; but being stimulated with a shilling, the page grew sanguine and thought he could.

Nicholas Nickleby 2007

He was no longer sulky and indolent: he no more desponded about himself, or defied his neighbours.

The Virginians 2006

I became the victim of ingratitude and cold coquetry — then I desponded, and imagined that my discontent gave me a right to hate the world.

The Last Man 2003

I have sometimes desponded, and almost despaired, because there was no one to whom to read a line, or of whom to ask a counsel.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte 2002

I had kept up my spirits when many a more vigorous frame had sunk, and many a maturer mind had desponded; but the perpetual recurrence of the same dreary spectacles, the dying, and the more fortunate dead, covering the highways, the fields, and the village streets, at length sank into my soul.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 Various

It soon turned out to be a deserved rebuke to any who desponded, along with myself, and finally prophetic.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 Various

Coleridge, who had desponded at the fate of Middleton, after the unsuccessful attempts he made to obtain a fellowship, lost all hope of procuring an income from the college, and as, through the instrumentality of Frend, with whom an intimacy had now taken place, he had been converted to what in these days is called Unitarianism, he was too conscientious to take orders and enter the Established Church.

The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1838 James Gillman

Ledyard never desponded -- no sooner was one of his castles demolished, than he set about building another.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 328, August 23, 1828 Various

Yet it appears by a subsequent letter, that the grievances of which the General complained so bitterly, were not cured even by the presence of the Chevalier; that those who had made a pretext of his absence to complain and despond, desponded still, and that, in fact, the malady was so deep-seated as to be incurable.

Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume I. Mrs. Thomson

"No-only that it's some kind of an avenue," desponded Pollyanna.

Pollyanna Grows Up 1914