Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use optimist in a sentence

18 example sentences · noun

Optimist means a person who expects a favourable outcome. Example: “You call her an optimist, but I call her an obnoxious Pollyanna.”

Examples of optimist by meaning

nounA person who expects a favourable outcome.

  • 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...
  • People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about.2017, Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better...

More sentences with optimist

  • You call her an optimist, but I call her an obnoxious Pollyanna.From the entry pollyanna
  • He used to call himself a “fretful optimist,” he said, but now he’s a “moderate fatalist.”2026 April 3, Matteo Wong, Lila Shroff, “Silicon Valley Is in a Frenzy Over Bots That Build Themselves”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The…. From the entry fatalist
  • Are you an optimist or a cautionist when it comes to tech?2016, Devorah Heitner, Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World, New York: Bibliomotion, →ISBN, page 169. From the entry cautionist
  • Gordon Brown may have his grumpy, Granita moments, but as a strategist he is an incorrigible optimist.2006 December 7, Michael White, “Breaking up is hard to do, even at the Treasury”, in The Guardian, London. From the entry incorrigible
  • But religious people are, even in spite of what they professly believe, optimists as a rule.1978, Mahinda Palihawadana, “A Buddhist Response: Religion Beyond Ideology and Power”, in Donald G. Dawe, John B[raisted] Carman, editors…. From the entry professly
  • As a result, the optimist always has the lower hand, given that everyone around him is the opposite.2019, Leander Moss, Death at a Discount: A Funny, Magical & Inspiring Tale of the After-life, Babelcube Incorporated, page 25. From the entry a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved
  • They were cheerful optimists; indomitable grapplers with forest and flood, who did almost incredible things with ax and saw and giant-powder.1912, Harold Bindloss, Vane of the Timberlands, page 19. From the entry grappler
  • This is not Timonism, I am an optimist.1906, Prof. Walter Raleigh, letter published in 1926. From the entry Timonism
  • She’s a “data optimist” who doesn’t ignore the dangers of climate change, but recognizes how the world is decarbonizing faster than most of us realize.2025 November 2, Sean Illing, “We can have growth while fighting climate change. How to change your mind on the climate’s future…. From the entry decarbonize
  • Paul Ehrlich, again, is not innocent here, for the best example, and the most important, is the pseudodebate between Malthusian pessimists and anti-Malthusian optimists.1998, Tom Athanasiou, Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, page 80. From the entry pseudodebate
  • For the first time in their lives the comfortable were uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit that there was something wrong.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. II. From the entry laugh on the other side of one's face
  • I am an optimist at bottom, with a superficial coating of pessimism, which thaws near a piano, a pretty girl, or a glass of Pilsner.1918, James Gibbons Huneker, “Jim the Penman”, in Steeplejack, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, part I (In Old…. From the entry pilsner
  • Some clever person came up with the apt name of little John (or big John for the optimist) for a suitably shaped container for those who were caught short.2009, Colin Cox, Short Hops Across the Atlantic, page 174. From the entry caught short
  • The rest of the hermeneutics of 'viewpoints' is not (in my view) all that relevant, insofar as the explanatory gap (on which Nagel is unaccountably an optimist!) is concerned.2009 May 15, Stevan Harnad, “Knowing Something When You Feel It”, in PhilPapers, Western University (Canada) Department of Philosophy. From the entry hermeneuticize
  • Anyway," he added, with the touch of the true optimist, "it's lucky I watched her, or she'd have carried off the whole bang shoot in less than thirty minutes."1921, Harry Mortimer Batten, Many Trails, page 163. From the entry the whole bang shoot
  • Although almost all nelumbos are rated hardy to zone 5, or according to some optimists, zone 4, that rating assumes enough water and soil to protect the tubers from freezing.2007 December 27, Leslie Land, “Garden Q.&A.”, in New York Times. From the entry nelumbo

Meaning of optimist

  1. noun A person who expects a favourable outcome.
  2. noun A believer in optimism.

Full definition of optimist

Questions about optimist in a sentence

How do you use optimist in a sentence?
Optimist is used as a noun. For example: “You call her an optimist, but I call her an obnoxious Pollyanna.”
What is a short sentence with optimist?
“This is not Timonism, I am an optimist.”
What does optimist mean?
Optimist means a person who expects a favourable outcome.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: optimist (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use optimist in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/optimist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.