Desperado

English

Noun

Desperado (plural desperadoes or desperados)

1. a bold outlaw, especially one from southern portions of the Wild West
   • 1850, Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, The present time

     The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions — students, young men of letters […], or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame, — might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch.

   • 1918, Willa Cather, My Antonia, Mirado Modern Classics, paperback edition, page 6

     Surely this was the face of a desperado.

Thesaurus

Cain, Judas, apache, assassin, assassinator, badman, bandit, betrayer, bloodletter, bloodshedder, bravo, bucko, bully, bullyboy, burker, butcher, button man, cannibal, convict, criminal, crook, cutthroat, deceiver, desperate criminal, devil, double-dealer, eradicator, executioner, exterminator, felon, fugitive, gallows bird, gangster, gaolbird, garroter, gorilla, gun, gunman, gunsel, hatchet man, head-hunter, hell-raiser, hellcat, hit man, homicidal maniac, homicide, jailbird, killer, lawbreaker, mad dog, man-eater, man-killer, manslayer, massacrer, matador, mobster, murderer, outlaw, pesticide, poison, poisoner, public enemy, quisling, racketeer, rough, rowdy, ruffian, scofflaw, slaughterer, slayer, strangler, swindler, thief, thug, torpedo, traitor, trigger man, two-timer

Etymology

From Spanish desesperado, past participle of desesperar, from Latin disperare, “despair”, “lose hope”, from prefix dis- + sperare, “hope”.

Translations

• Bulgarian: разбойник
• Finnish: desperado (fi)