Word Confusion: Desperate versus Disparate

Posted September 3, 2024 by kddidit in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

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“It was a disparate move” that actually seemed desperate, and I had to research this word confusion desperate vs disparate.

Sadly, desperate is a hopeless need that could be violent.

Disparate — no it’s not about disappearing — is about contrast. Things or people that are so different from the other.

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Exploring Later . . .

Lol, “Desert versus Dessert” is another pair of disparate things.

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Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Desperate	Disparate
Desperate, Sad, Depressed Emotions is under the Public Domain Mark 1.0 license, via Picryl courtesy of Pixabay.	Mansion with a Lot of Windows is under the Public Domain Mark 1.0 license, via Picryl and courtesy of Pixabay and Where Have All the Trailers Gone? is a still from videographer Mariel Carr, which is under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons and courtesy of the Science History Institute. — A disparate view of two houses.
Part of Grammar:
Adjective	Adjective; Noun Plural for the noun: disparates
Adjective: Feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with [Of an act or attempt] Tried in despair or when everything else has failed Having little hope of success [Of a situation] Extremely bad, serious, or dangerous [Predic.; of a person] Having a great need or desire for something [Of a person or fight] Violent or dangerous	Adjective: Essentially different in kind Not allowing comparison Containing elements very different from one another Noun: [Archaic; chiefly in the plural] Things and/or people so unlike that there is no basis for comparison
Examples:
Adjective: A desperate sadness enveloped Ruth. Drugs were used in a desperate attempt to save his life. There is a desperate shortage of teachers. I am desperate for a cigarette. The government is desperate to clean up Rio’s streets. He was a desperate criminal. It was a desperate struggle for his life.	Adjective: There were disparate objectives of the two groups. They inhabit disparate worlds of thought. It was a culturally disparate country. Noun: The disparates are what make life so interesting. “The yoking of disparates, the old and the new, continues to be a [poet Anne] Carson strategy” (Fried).
Derivatives:
Adverb: desperately Noun: desperateness, desperation	Adjective: nondisparate Adverb: disparately, nondisparately Noun: disparateness, nondisparateness
History of the Word:
Late Middle English in the sense in despair, from the Latin desperatus meaning deprived of hope, a past participle of desperare.	Late Middle English from the Latin disparatus meaning separated, from the verb disparare, from dis- (apart) + parare (to prepare); influenced in sense by the Latin dispar meaning unequal.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

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