FORLORN HOPE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Forlorn hope

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/fərlˈɔrn hoʊp/ Listen

adjective

Forlorn adj.

Deserted; abandoned; lost. "Of fortune and of hope at once forlorn." "Some say that ravens foster forlorn children."

Destitute; helpless; in pitiful plight; wretched; miserable; almost hopeless; desperate. "For here forlorn and lost I tread." "The condition of the besieged in the mean time was forlorn in the extreme." "She cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living."

A forlorn hope (Mil.), a body of men (called in F. enfants perdus, in G. verlornen posten) selected, usually from volunteers, to attempt a breach, scale the wall of a fortress, or perform other extraordinarily perilous service; also, a desperate case or enterprise.

Synonyms: Destitute, lost; abandoned; forsaken; solitary; helpless; friendless; hopeless; abject; wretched; miserable; pitiable.

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Etymology of 'Forlorn hope'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Forlorn hope" Quotes from Famous Books

... later, she was ready for the trip to New York City. The clock in the office marked the hour as one. A toddied individual in a great buffalo coat waited for her outside, hiccoughing and bandying jest with the half-frozen men who had spent the night with him in the forlorn hope of finding ...

— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash, but an obliged experiment—rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that lands a fireman from a burning staircase. Noon was made; the captain dined on his day's work, and I on watching him; and our place was entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me half pitiful and half absurd, ...

— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... games by a point, she must have known before her silver laugh became so hollow, and her pleasant smile so evidently theatrical and lip-deep; before what once was chanceful became desperate, and she fell back into the ranks of the forlorn hope—of the "Lost Children!" ...

— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... "Rather a forlorn hope that," replied Francis Jackson. "He has named his ship for the king that rules over us all, trampling on freedom of petition, freedom of debate, and even ...

— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined existence until they have found their phrases and the improvisation is complete, is it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally elusive, and that the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope of academic infatuation? ...

— Style • Walter Raleigh

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