Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A female given name derived from Polly and Anna; rare in the real world.
  • noun One who is persistently cheerful and optimistic, even when given cause not to be so.
  • noun colloquial, US A secret Santa gift exchange.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After the heroine of the novel Pollyanna, by Eleanor Hodgman Porter (1868–1920), American writer.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The sense of a persistent optimist comes from the name of the protagonist in a book by Eleanor Porter.

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