cynic

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“
I often tell my students a cynic is a disappointed idealist.

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Definitions (17)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. noun A person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness.
  2. noun A person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative.
  3. noun A member of a sect of ancient Greek philosophers who believed virtue to be the only good and self-control to be the only means of achieving virtue.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (8)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • Diogenes the cynic was a wise man for despising them; but a fool for showing it. —  Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries)
  • Similarly the word cynic is definitely not in my personal repertoire - Psycho is more apropos Re: hack forum —  PCLinuxOS-Forums
  • As a natural cynic, my knee-jerk reaction to such sentiments is usually to scoff and distance myself in some way. —  JamBase
  • But this small child is also a bold cynic, a critic who perceives even infant cousins as "little dirty brats born to one aunt or another whose names I did not want to know, whose hair I did not want to touch." —  PopMatters
  • Only a cynic -- and one with a tin ear for politics -- could have watched Tuesday night's meeting and not have been impressed with the goings on.
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

pessimist ·  misanthrope ·  skeptic ·  sentimentalist ·  humorist ·  doubter ·  reprobate ·  optimist ·  satirist ·  egoist ·  miser ·  realist

Used in the same contextWord Family

cynic:   cynics
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin cynicus, Cynic philosopher, from Greek kunikos, from kuōn, kun-, dog; see kwon- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Earlier also cynick; = Dutch ciniek = French cynique = Spanish cínico = Portuguese cynico = Italian cinico (cf. German cynisch = Danish cynisk, adjective, G. Danish cyniker, Dutch ciniker, n.), chiefly in the philosophical sense, from Latin cynicus, cynic, a Cynic (also literally in spasmus cynicus, cynic spasm), from Greek κυνικός, dog-like, also cynic, a Cynic, so called, as popularly understood, in allusion to the coarse mode of life or the surly disposition of these philosophers, but perhaps orig., without this implication, in ref. to the Cynosarges, Κυνόσαργες, a gymnasium outside of Athens, where Antisthenes, the founder of the sect, taught. The literal sense ‘dog-like’ is thought of in English, apart from the bookish use in cynic spasm and cynic year, only as an etymological explanation of the philosophical termination
 

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/ˈsɪnɪk/
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