I'd rather focus on anticipation. For me, "hope" has connotations of unjustified optimism, like "faith". As such, unjustified belief is (hopefully) a step on a road that would end with learning what's actually true and probably against unjustified belief, a "disappointment".

That depends on your definition of hope, really.

I've generally been partial to Derrick Jensen's definition of hope, as given in his screed against it:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/170/

But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

I'm not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don't hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn't crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it.