optimism
- 1A hopeful outlook that expects things to turn out for the best, or at least well.
Despite the layoffs, she maintained her optimism about finding a new job.
Investors showed cautious optimism as the market began to recover.
Similarhopefulness, hope, confidence, positivity
Oppositepessimism, despair, gloom
Note
The everyday sense still carries a superlative inside it: the word comes through French optimisme from Latin optimus, "best," a literal "best" that the philosophical doctrine keeps in plain view. It is usually uncountable, yet it readily takes an article or a qualifier, as in a certain optimism or cautious optimism. The plural optimisms exists but is uncommon.
- 2Confidence that, however things stand now, good is bound to defeat evil in the end.
The preacher's sermons radiated an optimism that evil, however powerful, would not have the final word.
Throughout the resistance, her optimism that justice would ultimately prevail never wavered.
Note
Where the best-of-all-worlds doctrine holds that the world is already as good as it can be, this belief puts the victory in the future: good wins eventually, not yet. It is a moral or religious conviction rather than a cheerful mood. That is why it sits naturally beside talk of providence and moral progress, and why someone can hold it while expecting a hard road in the meantime.
- 3The philosophical doctrine that the existing world is better than any other world that could have existed.
Voltaire wrote Candide to mock the optimism fashionable among eighteenth-century philosophers.
Leibniz defended optimism by arguing that a perfect creator would necessarily choose the best possible world.
Oppositepessimism
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of optimism apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From French "optimisme," which comes from Latin "optimus" ("best") combined with the suffix "-ism."