optimist
nounalso spelled OptimistUS /ˈɑptɪmɪst/ · UK /ˈɒptɪmɪst/
Etymology Borrowed from French optimiste.
1
A person who expects a favourable outcome.
- We are becoming as a nation, as a world, indeed, atom-conscious. Many of us are already afflicted with atomphobia, though so far it has manifested itself only in a mirage of autoaeromotive discs and a war of words between chronic optimists and empirical pessimists concerning civilization’s probable future.1947 September 27, Richard R. Werry, “An American Beginning for International Education”, in School and Society, volume 66, number 1709, Lancaster, Pa.: The Society for the Advancement of Education, Inc., page 238:
- People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious “possibilist”. That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.;2017, Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think:
2
A believer in optimism.
- Antonyms
- pessimist
- Derived terms
- antioptimist, cyberoptimist, optimistic, pessoptimist, poptimist, skeptimist, techno-optimist