Desperate means feeling or showing that you're in such a bad situation that you're willing to try anything, even things that might not work or that you'd normally never consider. When someone is desperate, they've run out of good options and are grasping at whatever might help.

If you're lost in the woods as the sun sets, you might make desperate attempts to find the trail, even bushwhacking through thorny underbrush you'd normally avoid. A student who forgot about a big project due tomorrow might make a desperate effort to finish it overnight. A team losing badly in the final minutes might try a desperate play that's risky but offers their only chance to win.

The word carries a sense of urgency and fear. Desperate people feel cornered or out of time. A desperate situation is one where things have gotten so bad that normal solutions won't work anymore. Sometimes people do things they later regret when they feel desperate, which is why we say someone made a desperate decision when they chose poorly under pressure.

You might hear someone say “don't do anything desperate” when they're trying to calm someone down who's panicking. The word can also describe wanting something very badly, like being desperate for water after running on a hot day.