Other forms: idealists
An idealist is somebody guided by how things ought to be. A young idealist, a hopeless idealist, idealists and pragmatists.
It is admiring and patronising in equal measure, depending on the speaker — calling somebody an idealist usually means their aims are good and their grasp of the possible is not. It is set against pragmatist. In philosophy an idealist holds that reality is fundamentally mental, which is a technical position sharing only the word. Note idealism, idealistic.
1nounidealistSomebody guided by how things ought to be.
“She's an idealist who believes she can end poverty in her town on her own.”
idealist is a person's outlook.
French idéaliste comes from ideal, from Latin idea, from Greek idea, a form. Idea and idol come from the same root about seeing.
Latin
idealis — ideal
French
idéaliste
English, today
idealist
From French idéaliste, from Latin idealis (“ideal”), from Latin idea (“idea”), equivalent to ideal + -ist.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA