How To Use Desperate In A Sentence

Every so often a rabbit would make a desperate, lung-bursting bid for freedom, only to provide an easy target for the twelve-bores.
A senior detective who led the hunt for two armed robbers behind a series of terrifying raids across Bradford today told of the desperate race against time to catch them before someone was shot.
None of us wanted to ‘need’ cigarettes almost desperately and to feel insecure and anxious without them.
She always seems to be desperately busy!
I clung onto bits of ice and tried desperately to remove the harness attaching me to the sledge.

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I've followed this story from the time Blaise and her boyfriend went galavanting around Marseilles, when you and your husband were desperately trying to find them both and fearing the worst. Une plaie - French Word-A-Day
Rescue teams worked desperately to restore utilities in the area shattered by the hurricane.
He is homeless and in desperate need of help.
I groped for the gear stick, sobbing desperately as the car lurched forward.
Few and far between were the desperate, overeager chat-up lines of some relationship-hungry singles.
The defense desperately needs him to be the run stopper in the middle.
Desperate copywriters use the ‘in the tradition of’ device, piggybacking on another writer's fame.
Then Vernage noticed Sergeant King staggering down the road in a desperate bid to flag down a car.
She wrote me a desperate letter.
The almost desperate character of the effort to silence or drown out antiwar protests suggests that something more than mindless flag-waving is going on here.
When he was fairly mastered, after one or two desperate and almost convulsionary struggles, the ruffian lay perfectly still and silent. Chapter LIV
The motion had particularly pleased Mobuto who was desperate to bring Zimbala back into world affairs.
Wherever in the world a people knows desperate want, there must appear at least the spark of hope, the hope of progress--or there will surely rise at last the flames of conflict.
However, there was no sign of desperately needed rain and a westerly roared in from Australia's arid outback, fanning flames and scattering red hot embers to start new blazes.
The mining firms are so desperate for employees that they are poaching them from each other.
While the Kelly gang appears to have posed a genuine threat to the authority of the ruling colonials, the film prefers to focus on the adventures of the outlaws rather than an increasingly desperate establishment.
If the real victims of drugs are the people who get their houses burgled by addicts desperate for the money for a fix, maybe we should legalise drugs, she suggests.
His desperate opponent returns a weak shot or a lob, either of which he puts away with careless bravado.
To the east the cordillera was scorched and spent, rubbled by decades of desperate agriculture.
But there's something desperate about the relentless jokiness. Times, Sunday Times
Smoking and sputtering, the glider zoomed away, with the Green Goblin desperately trying to pull the webbing from his eyes. SPIDER-MAN®: THE ADVENTURES OF SPIDER-MAN
She wants nothing more than a normal life with a proper home and a regular wage, and she is prepared to go to desperate lengths to try to keep the casual factory jobs she gets and loses on a regular basis.
As one character says here, with desperate weariness: ‘We electrocuted him, gassed him, put him in front of a firing squad.’
Although its cries were becoming increasingly desperate as the din of barking and shouting intensified, the thought of trying to help never entered my mind.
The central problem is that these two institutions are desperately undercapitalised. Times, Sunday Times
I'm desperately trying to recall examples to illustrate any of this, and completely failing.
Cold-calling, at one licensed dealer, when the salesmen got desperate, was just not tolerated, it was actively encouraged.
I wanted, desperately needed for him to reach across the line that he had drawn, and so it was with dumb horror that I watched him retreat, his expression turning lawyerly even as I read the helplessness in his eyes. Dreaming in French
He hasn't grudged Andy a moment of his time in the spotlight but has been desperate for a taste of it of his own.
It has seemed like an eternity as I've been desperate to get out on to that track and prove myself again at world level.
The very idea of Chef's Theater is so risible that we cannot be sure that the whole thing isn't merely an elaborate, brilliant hoax - indeed we desperately hope it is one.
I was so desperate for the object of my craving that I almost blurted out, ‘Are you going to buy that?’
The punitive actions include economic sanctions, which are certain to deal a severe blow to the North, which desperately needs global aid.
Her credibility has lost out to her desperate desire to be liked, even if it is by bull-necked honkers in shirts made of the stars and stripes.
My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober.". G.K. Chesterton
But it may prove the last bargaining chip of a desperate, war-weary people. Times, Sunday Times
One gave his own facemask to a desperate resident, then had to be helped down the stairs himself. Times, Sunday Times
Yet its importance as a metaphor for evil means that the coalition remains desperate to exorcise these demons.
Her suicide attempt was really a desperate cry for help.
It is a conceit altogether void of reason, but it is so wilful and pertinacious, that it is almost utterly inconvincible, and so it puts souls in the most desperate forlorn estate that can be imagined. The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
Now that John Terry has been debagged, England fans are desperate for someone to follow. Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
This is a desperate situation which requires a truly radical solution.
The second beneficiary, the Suffolk Accident Rescue Service, relies totally on charitable donations for its desperately-needed equipment.
In a place known as Nine Dragons, as the city's Hungry Ghosts festival burns around him, Bosch puts aside everything he knows and risks everything he has in a desperate bid to outmatch the triad's ferocity. Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly: Book summary
During the seven weeks he served at the fort, Fetterman grew increasingly insubordinate and desperate to prove his superiority in battle.
If they are that desperate for a news story perhaps some investigative journalism might be in order.
Having said all this, what should be clear is that the pedagogy of teaching creative writing is in desperate need of critical attention.
The immense man, brandishing his recovered certificates, plunged forward to encounter them, shouting in Arabic, hustled them back, kicked them, struck at the camels with a stick till those in front receded upon those behind and the street was blocked by struggling beasts and resounded with roaring snarls, the thud of wooden bales clashing together, and the desperate protests of the camel-drivers, one of whom was sent rolling into a noisome dust heap with his turban torn from his head. The Garden of Allah
I've been in and out of jail and round in circles for years - desperately wanting to get off drugs but finding no way to get off the merry-go-round of smack, stealing and the nick.
It seems odd that a poet so keen - perhaps even desperate - to reach across time, to provide us with such realism, should do so by writing wilfully unreadable poems.
It was the desperate act of a disgruntled former city employee who was refused his old job back.
Upon the dryasdust intricacies of grammar; and it is not as though he had already attained; he only desperately follows after: Robert Browning
Wherever in the world a people knows desperate want, there must appear at least the spark of hope, the hope of progress--or there will surely rise at last the flames of conflict.
Another population of Asiatic lions is desperately needed in order to safeguard the survival of this subspecies.
Desperate to hold on to her beloved son, Yvonne turns to her sister Leonie (Eileen Arkins), the bastion of rationality in this "raggle-taggle gypsy" family. Unhappy In Their Own Way
Brooks managed to squeeze 'peripatetic', 'equanimity', 'homeostasis', 'sojourner', 'grandiloquent' and 'didactic' into the brief 850 word article on the inner workings of Obama's mind, exposing a fragile psyche of his own, and a desperate need to validate his position as a national talking head. Ben Cohen: David Brooks and Big Words
His epilogue, half desperate, half triumphant, is one of the best I've heard.
The official dismissed the speech as the ramblings of a desperate lunatic.
But before that happens, she desperately wants a decent game.
Trials often descend into desperate searches for collateral information, such as the colour of paint, whether a bicycle was in a yard or whether a school was open that year.
Livia is desperately ambitious that her son, Tiberius, become Emperor on Augustus’s death, never mind that there are quite a few other heirs before him, or that neither Augustus nor Tiberius himself is very keen on Tiberius being Emperor. Dissecting the Devil «
No need to abandon their own people more than tears desperate not born.
He leaned against the wall desperately trying to clear his mind but the memory proved elusive.
He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang, 'We Can Work it Out' into the answerphone. U.K. Inquiry Hears Heather Mills's Phone-Hack Claims
they prey on the hopes of the desperate
The alarming trend for desperate medical sector docs and surgeons to reduce waiting lists by doing non-urgent but easy procedures first is life threatening and wrong.
His entire being had been drained by the immense blast he'd unleashed on the assaulting legions, but Rakael's desperate cry for help had catapulted him out of his repose.
In London, the housing crisis is very acute, there is a desperate shortage of social housing and with house prices so unreachable for the majority, few people are able to buy.
He gave me several chances to quit - "‘Do you give yet?" - but I flailed about, trying desperately to get out of his viselike grip.
We desperately need a budget process in which respected, nonpartisan experts have real standing to publicly evaluate budget numbers, with less focus on meeting immediate spending or deficits and greater focus on long-term accrued obligations. Chicagotribune.com - News
The company'sclosure has left many small businessmen in desperate financial straits.
They supported the pork-barrelling and protection of special interests, fighting a desperate rearguard action against the advancing dries.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
His hard, tough, unsentimental mind gave to the weak young republic the guidance it desperately needed.
Ben recently denied all but the earrings to the New York Post, but if you were acting like a desperate, obsessed dumpee, wouldn't you?
The whole of the first act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility, -- a jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in rhymed stanzas. The Critics Versus Shakspere A Brief for the Defendant
As her other children - Ben, nine, and Kylie, six - played outside, only a chesty cough betrayed their mum's desperate struggle.
Watch the last 2 Steve Jobs presentations for Apple New Product Releases (Motorola Itunes Phone, Black Ipod Nano, Itunes 4. 9-5.1, Harry Potter Audio Books Exclusive, Ipod Video, Skinnier Imac 20 Media Centre, Lost + Desperate Housewives on Ipod day after they are on TV for $1.99) - The Nano has barely been out a month and its a household name, at least where there is a teenager, or geek gadgeteer at heart. Disney, ABC : "I know these guys..."
She was attractive, flirtatious and a little bit desperate.
I had to grin, she looked kind of cute with red cheeks, shoveling food in her mouth while hugging herself and desperately trying to avoid my gaze.
They are desperate to get home, said Chauzy, but have not been able to because of conditions between Gatroun and the Chadian border. Thousands of Chadian Migrants Stranded in Southern Libyan Desert
Most print dealers were so desperate that they would undercut your price by a measly hundred dollars just to ace you out of a deal.
Any company that advertises itself as ‘fun’ is simply making a desperate and futile attempt to distract attention away from the soul-destroying mundanity that is the reality of its day-to-day life.
My best guess is that it is a desperate attempt to head off the Superstorms, floods and droughts of global warming.
He rocked for a moment on the edge, his arms circling wildly, desperately trying to regain his balance.
Paradoxically, the political situation is so desperate, so apparently hopeless, that everyone understands the responsibility of casting their vote.
Beneath his confident exterior, he was desperately nervous.
It was in these vales that the Saxons of the plain and the Gad of the mountains had many a desperate and bloody encounter, in which it was frequently impossible to decide the palm of victory between the mailed chivalry of the low country and the plaided clans whom they opposed. The Fair Maid of Perth
They may, indeed, I deny not, marry if they will, and have free choice, some of them; but in the meantime their case is desperate, Lupum auribus tenent, they hold a wolf by the ears, they must either burn or starve. Anatomy of Melancholy
Their countenances seemed fiercely writhen into the wildest expression of pride, hate, and a desperate purpose of fighting to the very last. The Fair Maid of Perth
Mary Ryan, from Property Vision, has viewed the house and believes it is in desperate need of a makeover.
Councillors are desperate to attract the supermarket chain to a site in Grange Road occupied by the Caldaire bus company.
Ricciardo loving this Madam Catulla, and using all such means whereby the grace and liking of a Lady might be obtained; found it yet a matter beyond possibility, to compasse the height of his desire: so that many desperate and dangerous resolutions beleagred his braine, seeming so intricate and unlikely to affoord any hopefull yssue, as hee wished for nothing more then death. The Decameron
Give me a dark back alley compared with being a pinball in the gallery of the desperate.
They revel in every perceived injustice, and are desperate to have someone to blame.
He was workshopping an innovative movement performance with street people, the desperate and creative young.
I can remember struggling to match 10 different plugs to 10 different sockets and configure a PC in a desperate attempt to have a teleconference.
Her mother was a distant figure, and throughout her childhood Jane nourished a desperate love for her that she felt was unrequited.
At this stage in history, the merchant class, desperate for money to finance their adventures, struggled with the monopoly of the moneylenders and overcame it.
We have seen a lot of desperate Democrats suddenly scrambling to "unify" with Clinton's supporters, now that they realize that their snowjob of an election has caused turmoil and will lead to an Obama boycott in November. Twisted little people
Crumb has never made any bones about his hatred for rock, and rock and roll, and indeed anything that wasn't pressed on shellac by desperately obscure bluesmen and jazzers in the twenties and thirties.
We continue to believe that interest rates will head higher as a desperately overheated economy fuels unprecedented borrowing demands.
Apparently, he hadn't shaved for a few days and his thick dark hair was in desperate need of a haircut.
Apol. xxxv., “publici hostes”; xxxvii., “hostes maluistis vocare generis humani Christianos” (you prefer to call Christians the enemies of the human race); Minuc., x., “pravae religionis obscuritas”; viii., “homines deploratae, inlicitae ac desperatae factionis” (reprobate characters, belonging to an unlawful and desperate faction); “plebs profanae coniurationis”; ix., “sacraria taeterrima impiae citionis” (abominable shrines of an impious assembly); “eruenda et execranda consensio” (a confederacy to be rooted out and detested). The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries
Although she followed this with hit after hit, she was desperately insecure and hid herself under thick make-up and a beehive hairdo.
This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies. Don't romanticize Thompson's suicide.
I struggled with my bags, desperately looking for a porter.
By now my igloo had become a small lake, and I was trying desperately to stay afloat. RESCUING ROSE
Add some desperately unfunny writing and a guy who doesn't really know how to be madcap and… well, we've all learned a lesson.
Contracted police trainers often cannot or will not operate in nonpermissive environments, thus confning their training to the capital city or secure areas while leaving unsecured remoter areas of a country without desperately needed police trainers and mentors, as is often the case in Iraq and Afghanistan today. David Isenberg: The Liability of Using a PMC to Do Foreign Police Training
Anzheluo to revive her, tearing her clothes, will be in the spirits dumping her body, with hands desperately Guozhao, the exhaustion of a night time, he finally saved her life.
He desperately wants to be an actor, so you'll have to give him time to get it out of his system.
Outside, the once splendid Nevski Prospekt (St. Petersburg's O'Connell Street) is in need of a lick of paint and seems to be trying desperately to become European, but its people are grey and wan.
They were desperate enough to try shock tactics.
I desperately needed something to occupy me during those long[Sentencedict], lonely nights.
Grandeur in appearance now that it had been smartened up, I desperately tried to avoid it.
Every day my mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with letters from desperate people who can't even get their dealers to be civil, leave alone helpful.
And you, Tanis Half-Elven, have degenerated into a liar," Elistan remarked, smiling at the pained expression Tanis tried desperately to keep off his face. Test Of The Twins
He is a desperate character, and in other lands might be dangerous; but he is safe enough here, for the bastinado is a terrible instrument of torture, and the man is now not only desperate in wrath, but is sometimes desperately frightened. The Pirate City An Algerine Tale
There is always someone's band playing on Ludlow Street, or a friend's one man show in alphabet city, or a comedy club desperate to pull you in off the sidewalk. Lily Blau: The Temple and Tony Kushner: Worshiping Art and the Art of Worship
I desperately tried to paddle away but the canoe move and I was wedged in.
She's a whirlwind of anger and violence, desperate to deny the finality of Rocky's affliction that she knew she would one day have to face.
`My government were desperate to play down the military's involvement in the attempted putsch. CODE BREAKER
Citizens in inner-city areas are desperately worried and rightly so.
Hortensio desperately wants to marry Bianca; however, Baptista will not allow his younger daughter to marry any man before his older Katherine has first wed.
The police are desperate to catch this man dead or alive.
He was always falling in love, and I want to see an analogy between his falling in love so desperately, so intensely, and his fascination with tigers.
He is a desperate criminal.
I'm not a desperate, easily-imprinted sheep, after all; I don't need answers, just the right questions.
The Ministry desperately tried to hush up the whole affair.
Beneath his confident exterior, he was desperately nervous.
He is so deep in debt and desperate for money that he's apparently willing to say anything.
Wherever in the world a people knows desperate want, there must appear at least the spark of hope, the hope of progress--or there will surely rise at last the flames of conflict.
When traveling in heavy rush hour traffic I mentally tag a few cars desperately tailgating and weaving.
Just where Faceman was ice-cool, desperately shallow and slightly horny all the time, Dirk Benedict also appears to be ice-cool, desperately shallow and slightly horny all the time. Big Brother Celebrity Hijack Betting Odds: Can John Win?
Why, only yesterday the desperate villain handcuffed the very sheriff in the very courtyard! The Hidden Hand
High levels of emergency admissions, soaring drug budgets, desperate efforts to meet Government targets and the costs of major pay deals have all contributed to the problems.
Mr Robinson said he had been horrified to watch the Boxing Day disaster unfold and was desperate to raise money from busking as he could not afford to give any cash himself.
She tried desperately to engage him in conversation.
We've rarely seen him in such unheroic mode (at one point he even breaks down and weeps), though he does radiate the intensity of a desperate dad.
That was Jessica's voice, slightly nasal, desperately advertising the fact that any pity would be welcome.
She looked desperately around for a weapon.
My own belief in non-partisan politics is not the musing of an idealist, but the tormented cry of a desperate man.
The prince sat in his ridiculous outfit strumming a lute that desperately needed to be tuned.
After the massacre the local port was a scene of panic as people, mostly women, desperate to escape, fought their way up the gangplanks carrying their belongings and children onto badly maintained and overloaded ferries.
The Daily Telegraph said Capello desperately needs to shake up his team to get the best out of players like Frank Lampard and a "dispirited" Rooney before the final group C game with Slovenia. The Age News Headlines
His right hand, clenched into an iron mallet, battered desperately at the fearful face bent toward his; the beast-like teeth shattered under his blows and blood splattered, but still the red eyes gloated and the taloned fingers sank deeper and deeper until a ringing in Turlogh's ears knelled his soul's departure. People of the Dark
When Pinkerton finally reappears, bringing his American wife with him, Butterfly bids a desperate farewell to her boy before retiring behind a screen to commit hara-kiri.
Traditional sitcoms, in particular, have fallen out of fashion as networks ditched the laugh track in recent years for "dramedies" such as "Desperate Housewives" and fresher formats in the vein of the mock documentary "The Office. A Nerdy Comedy's Winning Formula
Desperate to escape her hometown for the bright lights, she looks on Heather as a stick-in-the-mud, as bad as her boyfriend.
It starts with the observation that Major is struggling desperately to gain stature and authority.
Although in other poems Leapor shows that labouring class women can be desperately unhappy in marriage, she is not unequivocal.
Just as I was getting desperate for any simple declarative sentence to break the ice, he spoke. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Thousands of desperate-looking bad-tempered people had descended on Oxford Street in general and Selfridges in particular and were swarming like so many mad bees looking for a so-called bargain.
Somewhere out there was a desperate man, cold, hungry, hunted.
Workers dug beneath the ruins of the building in a desperate bid to reach any survivors trapped inside.
Later his teams carried desperately needed supplies for the starving diggers at Milparinka.
Despite spots of tempering demand, global growth is accelerating and the US economy remains desperately overheated.
He desperately wants to be an actor, so you'll have to give him time to get it out of his system.
Each attack requires a costly clean-up, using money which is desperately needed for other purposes.
I even became so desperate that I thought of returning to corporate life.
All the fish of these jungle rivers demonstrate a desperately tenacious grip on life.
Desperate for a wee, he did two laps of the living room barking his shins and becoming increasingly panicky before finally locating the light switch and making good his escape.
the Germans were desperately trying to contain the Anzio beachhead
I am that desperate that I would try the Noguchi antivenene, but it would have no more effect than the antitoxin. The Treasure-Train
I'm not so desperate as to agree to that.
She tugged desperately at her restraints as memory came flooding back, but the chains seemed to be unbreakable.
British journalists are apparently consensually beguiled by the former, while the latter beat desperately on the door of the media, which will not open. Lobbyists can do good but they need to be on a register | letters
He quests for a trophy to call his own, hoping the Kartoon King ice cream contest might gain him the conspicuous congratulations he so desperately requires.
For ten long minutes they stood talking, driving poor Gimblet to the desperate expedient of entering the shop and demanding a closer acquaintance with the cairngorm. The Ashiel mystery A Detective Story
Unfortunately, the values and ideals were also created by those badly behaved Europeans in conditions that the European Union is now desperate to abolish, that is small and medium-sized, competing political entities. Myth of the week
They admit they are now desperate for a lucky break.
Paul twisted, swivelled, danced and turned his way through some desperate tackles before pirouetting over the line in a mesmerising display of balance and control.
A man pretending to be a faith healer has conned around ￡20,000 out of desperate sick people.
I was desperate to find a way out of teaching so when this job came along I snatched at it.
It is 2014 and the Botox butchers have finally been outlawed - not before leaving their indelible mark on the phizogs of every Scot desperate enough to believe the hype.
Now we have a system that will help us reduce or even eliminate the tillage and cultivation that adds to our labor and harms the soil resources we so desperately want to protect.
He was a boy who desperately needed affection.
Most other people would be pretty well-advised to stay away, unless you're desperately seeking an indie-approved gateway into the world of lite FM.
He was really desperately, desperately nervous and of course, he went on stage and the curtain went up and a ‘star was born’ can I say.
I flailed around trying desperately to grab hold of something.
Of course, by virtue of association, your friend's shameless ogling makes you look just as desperate, most likely to the very people you might otherwise have had a shot with.
I desperately tried to paddle for the shore.
And when she was talking about the clash between her feelings and her principles, she had been desperately serious.
This man is desperate and should not be approached as he may have a gun.
It is hard to imagine what makes people desperate enough to leave their country to prowl the oceans in unseaworthy boats.
It was a last desperate throw of the dice to save his marriage.
The trial had started on the Monday and by this time there was a flurry of black-cloaked ushers briskly walking through the building, desperately looking for a policeman.
helpless and desperate--as if at the end of his tether
The ruling Kuomintang is desperately in need of reform, including rooting out blatant corruption and severing gangland ties.
One of these days, you'll see me on the news, wandering around downtown Baghdad with a dazed, desperate look in my glinty eyes as I stumble down the streets stopping the passing terrorists as they prepare for a fun-filled day of setting off improvised explosive devices. Bluemeany Diary Entry
The amateur dramatic society are desperately seeking men for the chorus of its April musical Anything Goes.
He ate his breakfast at the Grill every morning of his life, desperate to get away from that barracuda.
But he again affirms, in the same chapter, “That the justice of God is twofold: that one kind he always uses when he punishes abandonedly wicked and obstinate sinners, sometimes, according to his law; the other kind, when he punishes sinners neither obstinate nor altogether desperate, but whose repentance is not expected.” A Dissertation on Divine Justice
Popular entertainment has proved a useful tool in reinforcing damaging stereotypes about single, working women as desperate nutcases who use the workplace as little more than a hunting ground for husbands.

How To Use Desperate In A Sentence

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