Pollyannaish
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See also: pollyannaish and Pollyanna-ish
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
- (with the first element Pollyanna) pollyanna-ish, Pollyanna-ish, pollyannaish, Pollyannaish
- (with the first element Pollyann) pollyannish, Pollyannish
Etymology[edit]
Adjective[edit]
Pollyannaish (comparative more Pollyannaish, superlative most Pollyannaish)
- (derogatory) Unreasonably optimistic.
- 2000 June, Nicholas Rescher, “Optimalism and Axiological Metaphysics”, in The Review of Metaphysics, LIII, № 4, § iii, page 819:
- Accordingly the objection “Is not optimalism simply too Pollyanna-ish to be plausible?” can be met effectively.
- 2012 December 25, Victor Mair, “Chinese character of the year: mèng 梦 (‘dream’)”, in Language Log:
- Even long before this choice of character of the year was made, critics were complaining about the [Chinese] government’s Pollyannaish touting of mèng 梦, saying that the dreams of most people were in vain.
- 2017 April 18, Philip Oltermann, “Jürgen Schmidhuber on the robot future: ‘They will pay as much attention to us as we do to ants'”, in The Guardian[1], →ISSN:
- If that sounds a little bit Pollyannaish, it’s because Schmidhuber’s own experience […] must have taught him that competition can create losers as well as winners.
- 2018 June 30, Will Self, “New Dark Age by James Bridle review – technology and the end of the future”, in The Guardian[2]:
- On this basis, Bridle argues, it’s possible to conceive of a new kind of “guardianship” of our frazzled planet and its poisoned wells, one in which we all work together. This seems Pollyanna-ish as much as Panglossian to me […]
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
unreasonably optimistic
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