A person who is frightened and in need of help

Usage examples of desperate.

About the year 1418 the Acolhuans were attacked by a kindred race, the Tepanecs, who, after a desperate struggle, captured their city, killed their monarch, and subjugated their kingdom.

Now, in the eleventh hour of the election, Hamilton lashed out in a desperate effort to destroy Adams, the leading candidate of his own party.

But Ade Bennett had it, and he was human, and one day he might be homesick or desperate enough to find a way of getting back to Earth.

In the entire twelve-year history of FBI mistakes leading up to September 11, the fact that FBI headquarters ignored that desperate eleventh-hour plea from its own field agents is perhaps the greatest indictment of the house that Hoover built.

Perhaps, with Mary Fowler, after she had lost everything else, her whole life came to centre on Alberta, so that Alberta was everything and she felt toward her all that desperate protectiveness that a mother may feel toward a child.

The first character Alice meets is the harried White Rabbit, a desperate slave to his watch and busy schedule.

And Furvain, glancing for just a moment into his wine-bowl as though some poem might be lurking there, would draw a deep breath and instantaneously begin to recite a mock epic, in neatly balanced hexameter and the most elaborate of anapestic rhythms, about the desperate craving of a Pontifex for sausage made of steetmoy meat, and the sending of the laziest and most cowardly of the royal courtiers on a hunting expedition to the snowbound lair of that ferocious white-furred creature of northern Zimroel.

Navy was able to relieve the Army Air Force of antisubmarine duties which it had assumed at a time of desperate need.

On the return of spring, nothing appeared in arms except a hardy and desperate band, the remnant of that mighty host which had embarked at the mouth of the Niester.

I was desperate for company, even that of a Buddhist arhat with black gums.

Chapter V Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio -- Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion -- Cardenas in 1644 formulates his celebrated charges against the Jesuits -- The Governor, after long negotiations and much display of force, ultimately succeeds in driving out the Bishop -- For three years Cardenas is in desperate straits -- In 1648 Don Gregorio is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor, and for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion -- The Jesuits are forced to leave the town and to flee to Corrientes -- A new Governor is appointed in Asuncion -- He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle -- The latter is deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz The Governor, like a prudent soldier, was biding his time.

Robert realised that the situation was desperate and decided that the Queen should return to Kildrummy Castle with Neil Bruce and the Earl of Atholl, and then try to get to Norway.

They keep further north for Auckland, further south for New Plymouth, and the ship had struck just between these two points, on the desert region of the shores of Ika-na-Mani, a dangerous, difficult coast, and infested by desperate characters.

Or against the Azerbaijani Muslims who looked on him with glee for the virtually free slave labor he and other desperate infidels offered them.

Reports were saying Balthazar was getting desperate to complete his plans.