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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
idealist
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Bazarov is an idealist and a brave man, and his aims are rational.
▪ But at heart he remained an idealist about social issues.
▪ By bribery - all men are corruptible - and by removing permanently any so-called idealists who stand in our way.
▪ Cavalier, arrogant, mendacious, and whatever else he was, Mike Straus was also an idealist.
▪ Gatting, the street fighter; and Gower, the idealist.
▪ Paine, like many idealists in a hurry, was probably impatient of the slowness of legal remedies for existing abuses.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Idealist

Idealist \I*de"al*ist\, n. [Cf. F. id['e]aliste.]

  1. One who idealizes; one who forms picturesque fancies; one given to romantic expectations.

  2. One who holds the doctrine of idealism, in any sense. In senses 4 and 5 of idealism, opposed to realist.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
idealist

"one who represents things in an ideal form," 1829, from ideal + -ist. Earlier (1796) in a philosophical sense "one who believes reality consists only in (Platonic) ideals."\n\nIt seems even incredible, that any Idealist in any age could forget himself so far as to run his head against a post, merely because he found in his system, that no external world does exist, and that therefore nothing could be without to hurt him.

[F.A. Nitsch, "A General and Introductory View of Professor Kant's Principles," 1796]

\nEarlier still, "one who holds doctrines of philosophical idealism" (1701).
Wiktionary
idealist

n. 1 (context philosophy English) One who adheres to idealism. 2 Someone whose conduct stems from idealism rather than from practicality. 3 An unrealistic or impractical visionary.

WordNet
idealist

n. someone guided more by ideals than by practical considerations [syn: dreamer]

Wikipedia
Idealist (film)

Idealist is a 1976 Yugoslav drama film directed by Igor Pretnar. It was entered into the 10th Moscow International Film Festival where Radko Polič won the award for Best Actor.

Usage examples of "idealist".

British suspicion of the doctrinaire and the political idealist, the ordinary shopkeeper and householder are quite of opinion that urban values in land can be taxed legitimately for the benefit of the community, and that democracy would do well to decree some moderate tax on land values for the relief of the overtaxed non-landowner.

Through Novalis and Schelling, it would be the roots of the Romantic and Idealist Rebellion against the flatland aspects of the Enlightenment.

John Thomas Steadman -- a craftsman, idealist, sculptor and, like so many others before him, humble plagiarist -- and his new wife, Gloria, the daughter of a Giggleswick mayor and Plombier Provocateur, Gordon Twing, and his wife, Doreen.

His early verses attracted the attention of Stankevich, the famous head of the idealist circle, who introduced Koltsov to his Moscow friends.

The leader of the Ploughers, a harmless idealist by disposition, fluttered pathetically, listing in great detail what the government had done to bring this about, and what they should have done, and how they, the Ploughers, could accept no responsibility for it, and what they would have done, had they been given the opportunity, and if .

Die-hard materialists can have these experiences as easily as purebred idealists, and both are completely stunned into awestruck silence: the depths of the Mystery are disclosing themselves, and a muted mind must only bend in reverential awe.

He abounded in those idealist sonorosities that are the stock-in-trade of all solemn old-fashioned frauds.

In both the empiricist and the idealist currents, transcendentalism was the exclusive horizon of ideology, and in the successive centuries nearly all the major currents of philosophy would be drawn into this project.

Dino belongs, then, neither to dialectical History with its ever-evolving fashions, nor to the Eternity that idealist aestheticians imagine to transcend mere fashion.

Yet we in America, whose antiracist idealists are admired around the globe, seem to have lost these men and women as heroes.

Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant, and the youthful idealists of the Carbonari movement.

Die-hard materialists can have these experiences as easily as purebred idealists, and both are completely stunned into awestruck silence: the depths of the Mystery are disclosing themselves, and a muted mind must only bend in reverential awe.

The idealists in poetry, music, and philosophy gave place to great men of science, to figures such as those of Ludwig and Liebig, of Gauss, Riemann, and Helmholtz.

Through Novalis and Schelling, it would be the roots of the Romantic and Idealist Rebellion against the flatland aspects of the Enlightenment.

Michael had taken the last step in that process of dehumanisation which threatens idealists of his type.