Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view.
- noun The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
- noun The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In metaphysics:
- noun The doctrine that this world is the worst possible.
- noun The doctrine that the development of the universe has such a law that it must ultimately reach, or at least tend toward, the same nonexistence from which it sprang.
- noun The tendency to exaggerate in thought the evils of life, or to look only upon its dark side; a melancholy or depressing spirit or view of life.
- noun The worst possible condition; the point of greatest deterioration.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Metaph.) The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for or tends to the worst, or that the world is wholly evil; -- opposed to
optimism . - noun A disposition to take the least hopeful view of things.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A general
belief that bad things willhappen . - noun The
doctrine that thisworld is the worst of all possibleworlds .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the feeling that things will turn out badly
- noun a general disposition to look on the dark side and to expect the worst in all things
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I used just now the term pessimism; but that was doubtless in a great measure because I have been turning over a collection of the extraordinarily vivid drawings of Honoré Daumier.
Picture and Text 1893 Henry James 1879
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(Geismar, p. 183.) 16 Two striking stories in which the pessimism is the central thesis, and contemporaneous with White Fang, are "The Sun Dog Trail," and "The White Man's Way," both published in a later collection.
Le Milieu, Le Moment, La Race: Literary Naturalism in Jack London's White Fang 2010
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Lost in the pessimism is the fact that 20 out of 24 S&P 500 technology companies that have reported earnings so far have beaten Wall Street estimates.
Stromata Blog: 2008
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Lost in the pessimism is the fact that 20 out of 24 S&P 500 technology companies that have reported earnings so far have beaten Wall Street estimates.
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That which they call pessimism in Swift and in Byron is only a burning, sharp protest against the imperfection of life and man.
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The reason for my pessimism is the imbalances in trade between the members: Japan, United States, Europe and Asia.
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"It depends on what you call pessimism," Lorne rejoined.
The Imperialist Sara Jeannette Duncan
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That which they call pessimism in Swift and in Byron is only a burning, sharp protest against the imperfection of life and man.
The Man Who Was Afraid Maksim Gorky 1902
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But his pessimism is thankfully not shared by the wider group.
Evan Dawson 2009
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Actually, the reason for liberal pessimism is idealism.
tbtabby commented on the word pessimism
"'Tis almost as bad as Lovell's 'Farmhouse,' and that would be at least a thousand fathoms deep in the dead sea of pessimism." -A letter from 1794
Coleridge adapted this word from the French word pessimisme, which means "the worst."
March 5, 2018