desperate

Modifying Another Word

increasingly: Worse still, he ignores her increasingly desperate demands for some reaction to her.

Preposition: for

• outfit: I was getting desperate for an ancient soldier outfit for my son and found Charlie Crow on the internet.
• cash: These are no mean street kids, desperate for cash in an urban ghetto.

Infinitive complement

• cling: Perhaps they are in a state of shock - desperate to cling to the old world in the face of such horror.
• escape: Will Mark, desperate to escape, have the nerve to leave?
• impress: I was about 19 years old, very impressionable and desperate to impress.
• regain: They are desperate to regain rates of profit which match their non-European competitors.
• avoid: Now, they've thrown a moral fig-leaf to all those UN countries who were desperate to avoid doing anything brave.
• get: Desperate to get things under way, he hastily sprung the starting tape.

Modifies a noun

• plea: Brandon's desperate plea for help Treble tilt could be last throw Whickham's Vase glory remembered Hobson's choice was for England.. .
• attempt: A sign of the times, or a desperate attempt to maintain interest in an idea rapidly losing steam?
• housewife: To me she looks like a desperate housewife in need of a decent meal.
• strait: The fighting was protracted and bloody; but, as the day wore on, the English found themselves in desperate straits.
• plight: They should drop their obsession with hunting and focus on the desperate plight of Britain's farmers.
• bid: It had its Tony Blair figure call a snap election in a desperate bid to hang on to power.

Used with adjective complement

• seem: Wanda Jean ' s audience seemed desperate to talk about anything other then the powerful documentary we were there to imbibe.
• become: With each passing day the position for NATO becomes more desperate.
• feel: He said: " We are all feeling desperate about losing.
• get: With Leicester getting desperate, we could finally laugh at them.
• grow: Some sections experience marginal but very real gains, while others see their already miserable conditions grow even more desperate.