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).
- nursery area
- nursery cannon
- nursery class
- nursery education
- nurseryful
- nursery girl
- nursery ground
- nursery language
- nursery-maid
- nurseryman
- nursery meal
- nursery nurse
- nursery nursing
- nursery pudding
- nursery rhyme
- nursery school
- nursery schooling
- nursery slope
- nursery tea
- nursery teacher
- nursery teaching
- nurseryware
- nursery word
- nurse's aide
- nurse shark