Counsel of despair

[nq:1]What is the meaning of counsel of despair ? (I found a sentence somewhat like The hypothesis is a counsel of despair .) It seems to have become a fixed expression but cannot be found in the dictionary.[/nq]
Are you sure it isn't "council of despair"?
http://tinyurl.com/4oc5p

Skitt (in Hayward, California)

[nq:2]What is the meaning of counsel of despair ? ... become a fixed expression but cannot be found in thedictionary.[/nq]
[nq:1]Are you sure it isn't "council of despair"? [/nq]
Don't hit the poor enquirer with newspaper puns this early in the thread!
"Counsel of despair" is "advice to despair": it usually means a policy of giving up trying to solve a particular problem.

Mik

[nq:1]Hi What is the meaning of counsel of despair ? (I found a sentence somewhat like The hypothesis is a counsel of despair .) It seems to have become a fixed expression but cannot be found in the dictionary.[/nq]
I'm not familiar with it as a fixed phrase, but I found where someone quoted the Cambridge Dictionary (UK) entry:
A counsel of despair is advice which accepts that
somethin

[nq:2]What is the meaning of counsel of despair ? ... a fixed expression but cannot be found in the dictionary.[/nq]
[nq:1]Are you sure it isn't "council of despair"? [/nq]
"Counsel of despair" makes more sense to me, and I see that it generates 6,240 hits on Google, as opposed to 325 for the "council" version.
claim that the following is a quote from Stephen Hawking's "A brief Histo

(snip)
[nq:1]"Counsel of despair" is "advice to despair": it usually means a policy of giving up trying to solve a particular problem.[/nq]
Sounds like a reference to the book of Job:
His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse *** and die!"
Context:

[nq:1]Hi What is the meaning of counsel of despair ? (I found a sentence somewhat like The hypothesis is a counsel of despair .) It seems to have become a fixed expression but cannot be found in the dictionary.[/nq]
Depends on the dictionary: it's certainly in the Shorter OED, where it is defined as "an action to be taken when all else fails." However, this definition doesn't quite correspond

[nq:1]I'm not familiar with it as a fixed phrase, but I found where someone quoted the Cambridge Dictionary (UK) entry: ... too difficult to achieve. It is a counsel of despair to say that the task is too big to tackle.[/nq]
In my experience it's almost always used in a pejorative sense: Speaker A makes a suggestion and Speaker B objects to it on the grounds that it's "a counsel of despair", i

[nq:2]I'm not familiar with it as a fixed phrase, but ... to say that the task is too big to tackle.[/nq]
[nq:1]In my experience it's almost always used in a pejorative sense: Speaker A makes a suggestion and Speaker B objects ... "a counsel of despair", in a situation which Speaker B maintains isn't as hopeless as Speaker A suggests it is.[/nq]
And rightly so! Another objection would be t