Discourage, dishearten, dispirit, deject mean to weaken in qualities that maintain interest, zeal, activity, or power to continue or to resist.
Discourage implies not only the loss of courage and confidence but the entrance of fear and the marked diminution of all power to summon up one’s forces.
Dishearten differs little from discourage, but it stresses not so much a mood or a state of mind as a loss of heart or will to accomplish a purpose or to achieve an end.
Dispirit distinctively implies the loss of cheerfulness or hopefulness; it often suggests a prevailing gloom that casts a blight upon a gathering, a project, or whatever depends for its success upon the spirits of those who enter into it.
It may also, more strongly than discourage, suggest the way an individual or group affects others.
Deject, even more strongly than dispirit, implies a casting down, with resulting loss of cheerfulness or hopefulness, but, unlike dispirit, it refers usually to the individual alone.