Pangloss
/ˈpaŋɡlɒs
/noun
A person who is optimistic regardless of the circumstances: as factories moved out of the US in the 1970s, the Panglosses of the day called it progress...
- By the novel's end Pawkie, like a Scottish Pangloss, is announcing that reform is in the air and that the world is becoming better and better.
- Brad Setser and Nouriel Roubini portray us as modern-day Panglosses for expecting an orderly adjustment of global economic imbalances and sustained U.S. hegemony.
- One needn't be a Pangloss to dismiss the notion that the world can ever get ‘better.’
Derivatives
Panglossian
- Like Hammond, Athanasiou argues that the various modes of Panglossian optimism that envisage only win-win scenarios obscure the fact that humanity now faces some tough choices and problems.
- The Panglossian optimism underpinning such remarks obscures other more serious flaws: To offset the shortfall in domestic savings, the US private sector has been borrowing from abroad.
- The film suggests that US rehabilitation involves lots of hugs, tears, group chants, and saccharine effusions of Panglossian optimism.
Origin
Late 18th century: from the name of the tutor and philosopher in Voltaire's Candide (1759).
- self-realization
- self-referential
- self-referentiality
- self-referentially
- self-reflection
- self-reflective
- self-reflexive
- self-regard
- self-regarding
- self-regulating
- self-regulation
- self-regulatory
- self-reliance
- self-reliant
- self-reliantly
- self-renewal
- self-renunciation
- self-report
- self-reproach
- self-reproachful
- self-respect
- self-respecting
- self-restrained
- self-restraint
- self-revealing