desperado [E17th] It looks like a Spanish word, but desperado is almost certainly one hundred per cent English—a pseudo-Spanish alteration of desperate [LME], probably created to sound more impressive and emphatic. Between the early 17th and early 18th centuries a desperate was a desperate or reckless person, just like a desperado. An earlier meaning was ‘a person in despair or in a desperate situation’, which developed into ‘a person made reckless by despair’. In both senses desperate is earlier than desperado, but the more exotic form ousted the original. The ultimate origin of desperate is Latin desperare ‘to deprive of hope’, the source of despair [ME].