Meaning & use
an optimist
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A person who expects good things to happen or believes that good will come from a situation.
Grammar: Countable: an optimist, optimists. Often used with 'be' or 'become'.
Patterns
- be an optimist
- a born optimist
- an eternal optimist
She's an optimist who always sees the bright side of things.
Even after losing his job, he remained an optimist.
Optimists believe that technology will solve many of our problems.
Word forms
| plural | optimists |
|---|
Common combinations
- a born optimist
- My grandmother was a born optimist; nothing ever got her down.
- an eternal optimist
- He's an eternal optimist, always expecting the best.
- remain an optimist
- Despite the bad news, she remained an optimist.
- optimist about something
- He is an optimist about the future of the company.
Synonyms and how they differ
- idealist
- An idealist believes in perfect standards and may ignore practical problems; an optimist simply expects good outcomes.
- positive thinker
- A positive thinker deliberately focuses on good thoughts; an optimist may naturally expect good things without trying.
Opposites
Word family
- optimism noun
- The feeling or belief that good things will happen.
- optimistic adjective
- Expecting good things to happen.
- optimistically adverb
- In an optimistic way.
Commonly confused: an optimist or optician?
an optimist vs optician
An optician is a person who makes or sells glasses; an optimist is a person who expects good things.
Practice
Even when things go wrong, Tom is ___ who always expects a happy ending.
Choose one answer.
'An optimist' is correct because 'optimist' starts with a vowel sound and we are describing Tom as one example of an optimist. 'An optimist' is wrong because 'a' is not used before a vowel sound. 'Optimist' without an article is not correct here because we need a singular countable noun with a determiner. 'The optimist' would imply a specific optimist already known, which is not the case.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “an optimist”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.