despair vs sadness

despair

noun
  • That which causes despair. 

  • Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency. 

  • That which is despaired of. 

verb
  • To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation. 

  • To cause to despair. 

sadness

noun
  • An event in one's life that causes sadness. 

  • The state or emotion of being sad. 

How often have the words despair and sadness occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )