adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Marked by pessimism and little hopefulness; expecting the worst.

   "a pessimistic view of the future"

2. 2
   Pertaining to the worst-case scenario.

   "a pessimistic estimate"

3. 3
   Taking out exclusive locks on data to prevent conflicts with other processes that might modify it.

   "pessimistic concurrency; pessimistic locking"

Adjective

1. 1
   expecting the worst possible outcome wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

disheartenedpessimistbearishbleakbluebowed-down

Antonyms

All antonyms

optimisticsanguine

Example

More examples

"The optimist looks into a mirror and becomes more optimistic, the pessimist more pessimistic."

Etymology

From pessimist + -ic.

Related phrases

pessimistic concurrencypessimistic timeworst case

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.