Your English: Collocations: optimism

Optimism can be described as a positive feeling about the future.

Most people start the New Year with a sense of renewed optimism. It’s a fresh start and, perhaps, an opportunity to adopt a new approach.

Optimism can be boundless, irrepressible, unbridled or unfailing, as in ‘As the new football season begins, there is a feeling of unbridled optimism at the club’. It can, however, also be unrealistic, naïve, misplaced, undue, unwarranted or even blind, as in ‘The optimism surrounding the football club at the start of the season quickly turned out to have been misplaced’.

If you are an optimist, it might be advisable to be a bit more restrained. Cautious, guarded or reserved optimism might result in you being less disappointed when reality kicks in, as in ‘After two successive draws, a sense of cautious optimism has returned to the  football club’. Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to renewed optimism because that might end in disappointment again.

Some people just cannot help it though and, no matter what happens, they have a buoyant, cheerful, cheery or infectious optimism, as in ‘It was difficult not be influenced by the manager’s cheery optimism in the face of a string of poor results’.

It is quite normal for people to be optimistic at the start of something, but that optimism can quickly fade, wane or completely evaporate when things turn out badly, as in ‘The sense of renewed optimism at the start of the year has completely evaporated ’.