I despair ____ ever teaching him anything.
A. in 917,000
B. of 1,520,000
C. off 12,900
D. on 241,000

Note: I googled “despair in”, “despair of”, … the search counts are listed above. It looks like B is the answer, but all of the answers seem wrong to me. What do you think?If I had to choose one answer, it seems D sounds best among all the answers.The question is posted in a wrong category. My apologies.

Question

I despair ____ ever teaching him anything.
A.	in	917,000
B.	of	1,520,000
C.	off	12,900
D.	on	241,000

Note: I googled “despair in”, “despair of”, … the search counts are listed above. It looks like B is the answer, but all of the answers seem wrong to me. What do you think?If I had to choose one answer, it seems D sounds best among all the answers.The question is posted in a wrong category. My apologies.

Answer

"Despair of" is the only one that sounds natural to me. "Despair off" in the Google search is undoubtedly the result of poor typing or spelling skills ;-).  "Despair in" and "despair on" both sound strange to me.

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