quixotic |
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American Heritage Dictionary (2 definitions)
- Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.
- Capricious; impulsive: "At worst his scruples must have been quixotic, not malicious” ( Louis Auchincloss).
–adjective
Century Dictionary (1 definition)
- Pertaining to or resembling Don Quixote, the hero of Cervantes's celebrated romance of that name; hence, extravagantly or absurdly romantic; striving for an unattainable or impracticable ideal; characterized by futile self-devotion; visionary.
Wiktionary (3 definitions)
GNU Webster's 1913 (2 definitions)
WordNet (1 definition)
Elsewhere on the web
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Billionaires tend to engage in quixotic legacy-building, and if we buy the thrust of David Kirkpatrick's crisply written "The Facebook Effect," Facebook was imbued with a certain purity from the beginning.
Thus, without the support of 14 more Democrats, Sen. Dodd's quest was quixotic from the start, and it was pure political theater, meaning that it was pointless to request that the other candidates show up to help him get destroyed in a vote in which everyone knew the outcome anyway.
Some of the hard left is more interested in quixotic ideological battles that they fight with absolute certainty.
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Pronunciations
/(kwĭk-sŏtˈĭk)/
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Etymology
American Heritage Dictionary (1)
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From English Quixote, a visionary, after Don Quixote, hero of a romance by Miguel de Cervantes.
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