An ____ always looks on the bright side of every bad situation.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
As an ____, he always believed that things would work out in the end, no matter how bad they seemed.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der.
Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder.
Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi
Proto-Indo-European *-tm̥mos
?
Latin optimus
Proto-Indo-European *-id-
Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti
Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō
Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)
Proto-Indo-European *-mos
Proto-Indo-European *-mós
Ancient Greek -μός (-mós)
Ancient Greek -ῐσμός (-ĭsmós)der.
Latin -ismusbor.
French -isme
French optim(isme)
▲
Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)
Proto-Hellenic *-tās
Ancient Greek -τής (-tḗs)
Ancient Greek -ῐστής (-ĭstḗs)bor.
Latin -istabor.
French -iste
French optimistebor.
English optimist
Borrowed from French optimiste.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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: