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Desperado   /dˌɛspərˈɑdoʊ/   Listen
Desperado

noun
(pl. desperadoes)
1.
A bold outlaw (especially on the American frontier).  Synonym: desperate criminal.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Desperado" Quotes from Famous Books



... It's a sort of national trait, you know, very much like the way we English bury our heads in the sand when we hear unpleasant truths. The last thing Fischer wants is advertisement, and yet he goes to some of his Fourteenth Street friends and unearths a popular desperado to get rid of me. The fellow happens most unexpectedly to fail, and now Fischer has to face a good many awkward questions and a good deal of notoriety. No, I don't think Fischer ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... "Don Desperado Walked on the Prado, And there he met his enemy. He pulled out a knife, a, And let out his life, a, And fled for his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... high-flown name, and a most melodramatic and commonplace ending, shows yet great power in the delineation and grouping of characters. The young school-girls are as real as those of Charlotte Bronte; and although the typical maidenly desperado is present,—lying and cheating with such hopeless obviousness that it seems as if they must all have had to look very hard the other way to avoid finding her out,—yet there is certainly much promise and power in the narrative. Let us hope that the modesty of the title of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... liquor usually comes at this time. This is the time, too, of sexual temptation, if not actual indulgence. The temptation to do something startling is almost irresistible; robberies will be planned, hold-ups thought of, abductions contemplated; the life of a desperado entertained. The moral character seems to be in a state ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... the apprehension and arrest of a notorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick. His present whereabouts are somewhat contiguous to the Black Hills. For further information, and so forth, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... Cuba, being reduc'd to the same Vasselage and Misery as the Inhabitants of Hispaniola, seeing themselves perish and dy without any redress, fled to the Mountains for shelter, but other Desperado's, put a period to their days with a Halter, and the Husband, together with his Wife and Children, hanging himself, put an end to ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... dared but say, "Forever," and shout it at him! She was desperate enough to try her chances at shooting him if she but had the pistols, and was sure they were loaded—a desperate chance indeed against the best shot on the Pacific coast, and a desperado at that. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... heedless of his good name, and too blind to the truth that though right and wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is of an awful sacredness. If Robespierre passed for a hypocrite by reason of his scruple, Danton seemed a desperado by his airs of 'immoral thoughtlessness.' But the world forgives much to a royal size, and Danton was one of the men who strike deep notes. He had that largeness of motive, fulness of nature, and capaciousness of mind, which will always ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley



Words linked to "Desperado" :   USA, US, U.S., America, outlaw, United States of America, United States, malefactor, criminal, U.S.A., felon, the States, crook



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