Pollyannaism

Pollyanna +‎ -ism

Pollyannaism (uncountable)

1. Persistent irrational optimism.
   • 1975 May 9, Germaine Greer, “At the U.N., Women’s Year ‘of Disgrace’”, in New York Times:

     […] some good guys at the Secretariat decided that 1975 should be International Women’s Year. ¶ It is typical of the special brand of United Nations Pollyannaism that they did so regardless of the fact that Secretariat hiring policies are grossly discriminatory.

   • 1988, Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, 1994, Chapter One,

     I realize one self-evaluation is as true as another and that my mother’s relentless Pollyannism was a less melancholy and more efficient way of muddling through than my gloom or my sister’s saturnine honesty.

• Pollyannism

• Panglossianism

• Mark Tapleyism
• Micawberism