emotionalistn.adj.
/ᵻˈməʊʃn̩əlɪst/, /ᵻˈməʊʃn̩l̩ɪst/, /ᵻˈməʊʃənl̩ɪst/, /ᵻˈməʊʃ(ə)nəlɪst/, U.S. /əˈmoʊʃ(ə)nələst/, /iˈmoʊʃ(ə)nələst/ A. n.
1. Philosophy. A person who believes that emotions, as opposed to reason, are the basis for behaviour and action.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > aspects of emotion > emotional perception > [noun] > one having emotional perception > one who knows by own feelings
feeler1435
emotionalist1850
1850 Brownson's Q. Rev. Apr. 182 This is conclusive against the sentimentalists or emotionalists.
a1866 J. Grote Exam. Utilit. Philos. (1870) iv. 62 Mill writes..as if he were a mere emotionalist.
1916 Harvard Theol. Rev. 9 111 The emotionalist, as I understand him, holds that the only primary values are feelings.
1952 Philos. & Phenomenol. Res. 13 76 As the emotionalists themselves admit, a great many pictures, statues, and so on are not products of skilled objectification of feeling.
2001 M. B. Hamilton Sociol. of Relig. (ed. 2) iv. 55 Religion, the emotionalists argued, is not a matter of intellectual curiosity.
2. An emotional person, esp. one who is excessively so. Also: a person who appeals to the emotions.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > aspects of emotion > capacity for emotion > [noun] > emotional character or temperament > person
emotionalist1860
1860 D. M. Mulock in Macmillan's Mag. 1 454/2 He is more of a dreamer or a moralizer than an emotionalist.
1888 C. Monkhouse in Academy 23 June 425/1 He is no professional emotionalist, making capital out of pain.
1920 Q. Jrnl. Speech Educ. 6 37 Professor Raleigh..scorns the lachrymose appeals of the literary emotionalist.
1952 T. Bankhead Tallulah iii. 82 Mr. W. was an emotionalist who rarely succumbed to the chill demands of logic.
2008 Sunday Independent (Ireland) (Nexis) 7 Sept. They are the great emotionalists of hurling, incapable of playing a routine match, forever propelled towards the operatic, the dramatic.
B. adj.
Based on, or emphasizing the importance of, emotions; of, relating to, or designating an emotionalist.
ΚΠ
1884 J. Parker Apostolic Life (new ed.) III. lxxxi. 66 Would he now be called fanatic, emotionalist, enthusiast?
1895 E. Newman Gluck & Opera ii. iii. 251 On the emotionalist theory a drunken man should give the best representation of drunkenness, and an athlete the best representation of a gladiator.
1932 Charleston (W. Va.) Daily 17 Apr. 10/4 This concept is the work of a staid mind—too staid, in truth, for the emotionalist sons of France.
1965 E. E. Evans-Pritchard Theories Primitive Relig. iii. 48 The emotionalist explanations of primitive religion which I have discussed have a strong pragmatist flavour.
1991 Jrnl. Islamic Stud. 2 280 This is neither the American kind of emotionalist or psychological history, he notes, nor is it a structural-functional version.
2005 New Yorker 12 Dec. 114/1 Her work has been a cross between the European (theme-heavy, emotionalist, I-can't-take-this-anymore) and the American (abstract, formalist, shut-up-and-dance).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1850