IDEALIST

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does idealist mean? 

• IDEALIST (noun)
  The noun IDEALIST has 1 sense:

1. someone guided more by ideals than by practical considerations

  Familiarity information: IDEALIST used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IDEALIST (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone guided more by ideals than by practical considerations

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

dreamer; idealist

Hypernyms ("idealist" is a kind of...):

visionary (a person given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "idealist"):

Don Quixote (any impractical idealist (after Cervantes' hero))

romantic (a soulful or amorous idealist)

Derivation:

idealism (elevated ideals or conduct; the quality of believing that ideals should be pursued)

idealism (impracticality by virtue of thinking of things in their ideal form rather than as they really are)

 Context examples 

Idealist and romanticist that I was and always had been in spite of my analytical nature, yet I had failed till now in grasping much of the physical characteristics of love.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Norton's an idealist—a Harvard man.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

On the contrary, idealist that I was to the most pronounced degree, my philosophy had always recognized and guerdoned love as the greatest thing in the world, the aim and the summit of being, the most exquisite pitch of joy and happiness to which life could thrill, the thing of all things to be hailed and welcomed and taken into the heart.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Not that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the last strongholds of my faith with a vigour that received respect, while not accorded conviction.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)