fatalist

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“
I'm more like a fatalist--sometimes I hardly know what I am I could tell you what you are,' said Edith, 'but I won't, because now you must take me to the Carlton.

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Definitions (5)

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  1. A believer in fatalism; one who maintains the opinion that all things happen by inevitable predetermination. Fatalists, … such as hold the material necessity of things without a Deity, … that is indeed the atheists. Cudworth. The third sort of fatalists do not deny the moral attributes of the Deity, in his nature essentially benevolent and just. I. D'Israeli, Amen. of Lit., II. 398.
  2. One whose conduct is controlled by belief in fatalism; one who accepts all the events and conditions of life as proceeding from or leading to an inevitable fate: as, Orientals are naturally fatalists. Giovanni comes upon the scene a professed and daring infidel, and, like all other infidels, a fatalist. Gifford, Int. to Ford's Plays, p. xxxi. To the confidence which the heroic fatalist [William of Orange] placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vii.

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Examples (50)

  • I'm willing to be a fatalist, and say it was ordained from the beginning that Opdyke must be flayed and hung up for the crows of time to pick; but as for saying in a hushed voice that he is the especial object of some wholly beneficent and divine plan, I can't do it, and I won't. —  The Brentons
  • He is a fatalist, and he studies the workings of fate in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. —  Figures of Several Centuries
  • Fair Mary seems to be a fatalist, and, after vowing never to marry, accepts as her destiny the hand of Sir William Fenwick of Wallington. —  Ballads of Romance and Chivalry Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series
  • I have wondered a thousand times to hear people say, 'I don't like this business,' or 'I wish I could exchange it for that;' for with me, when I have had anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always set about it like a fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun was to set One's personal enjoyment is a very small thing, but one's personal usefulness is a very important thing." —  Cheerfulness as a Life Power
  • In other words, he asserts that the ordinary man is a fatalist--for Froude knew very well that between the fatalist and the believer in a possibility of miracle there is no conceivable position. —  Froude's Essays in Literature and History With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. = D. G. Danish Swedish fatalist, from French fataliste = Spanish Portuguese Italian fatalista; as fatal + -ist.
 

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