Hope refers to the feeling of trust, confidence, belief or expectation that something wished for can or will happen. It commonly describes the actual thing wished for, a person or thing that is a source of hope, and the virtuous desire for future good, which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to a hollow; a valley, especially the upper end of a narrow mountain valley when it is nearly encircled by smooth, green slopes; a comb, a sloping plain between mountain ridges, and a small bay; an inlet; a haven, so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Hope as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include to want something to happen, with a sense of expectation that it might, to be optimistic; be full of hope; have hopes, to place confidence; to trust with confident expectation of good; usually followed by in, and to wish, which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
