“Desperate” is a word whose meaning I have known for some time. But when I came across this 1762 estate inventory from Baltimore County, Maryland, where the debts due the estate were separated out into “sperate” and “desperate” ones, I had a brief moment of confusion.
I knew what the desperate debts were: ones that were probably not going to be collected by the estate. It seemed reasonable that sperate and desperate debts were likely opposites, at least in a sense, since they were the only two categories into which the debts were put. Sure enough, Merriam-Webster defined the word as “give some hope of being paid.”
I never thought of the root word of desperate being “sperate.”
I probably shouldn’t admit that I’ve researched this long without having seen the word. Perhaps I have seen it, but it’s been so long that I have forgotten I was ever exposed to it. At any rate, it never hurts to admit we may have a gap in our knowledge or have forgotten something.
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