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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.
  2. adj. Capricious; impulsive: "At worst his scruples must have been quixotic, not malicious” ( Louis Auchincloss).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. 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

  1. adj. Possessing or acting with the desire to do noble and romantic deeds, without thought of realism and practicality.
  2. adj. Impulsive.
  3. adj. Like Don Quixote; romantic to extravagance; absurdly chivalric; apt to be deluded.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Like Don Quixote; romantic to extravagance; prone to pursue unrealizable goals; absurdly chivalric; apt to be deluded. See also quixotism.
  2. adj. Like the deeds of Don Quixote; ridiculously impractical; unachievable; extravagantly romantic; doomed to failure.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. not sensible about practical matters; idealistic and unrealistic

Etymologies

  1. From English Quixote, a visionary, after Don Quixote, hero of a romance by Miguel de Cervantes.

Examples

  • “The rest of you can just scream impotently behind the wheel; I get to write impotently and show the younger people what the word "quixotic" means.”

    SFGate: Top News Stories

  • “My Best Friend shows [Patrice] Leconte's fondness for personalities wrapped up in quixotic conflicts, but the premise is too incredulous even by his own standards," writes Eric Kohn.”

    GreenCine Daily: Wrapping Tribeca.

  • “Devoted IsThatLegal readers may recall my quixotic efforts to use the Freedom of Information Act to learn about the potential involvement of DOJ's and other branches 'lawyer's roles in approving of interrogation tactics that amount to torture.”

    IsThatLegal?

  • “So this exercise in tilting at windmills can't even be described as quixotic, since that would imply some expectation of success, however delusional.”

    Redskins Insider Podcast -- The Washington Post

  • “She implies that eliminative materialism is not a program for reforming the taxa of psychologists and neurologists, but some kind of quixotic campaign against poetry in ordinary language.”

    Perils of pop philosophy

  • “But since editorial offices tend to clear out then, too, it would be a kind of quixotic time to be pitching a book: even if an editor loved it, it would be well-nigh impossible to gather enough bodies for the necessary editorial meeting to acquire it.”

    Author! Author! » 2008 » July

  • “I don't think it is, which is why I don't feel comfortable with the idea that researching a cure for cancer is somehow a "quixotic" venture to defy the inevitable.”

    Ride To Conquer Cancer

  • “What's "quixotic" about another repetition of the idea that fat people are actually healthy?”

    Archive 2007-05-01

  • “Publicity is already building, as you can see by the tour website, and Larry has some ingenious ideas for funding his "quixotic" project.”

    Book Nerd Returns; Link-Mad Monday; Preview

  • “One reserves the term "quixotic" for hopeless causes.”

    The Man Who Ended Slavery

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘quixotic’.

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Comments

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  • Winly Mallard What a negative word...wow..sounds good!..Except it's one of those words the vocabularyistic LOL use to insult positive minded people striving for the utmost..GOOD to strive high diligently!..So the 'low' isn't as low if there is a mistake!!! Doesn't Always work..but Usually!!!..It Does Work Out Well!- To work out hard and happy in life..or just get the job done and make it happy!..Keeping Health in Mind Of Course!


    http://touch.facebook.com/#/story.php?id=100000209953179&v=wall&story_fbid=207474925932417 Mar 21, 2011
  • Winly Mallard http://touch.facebook.com/#/profile.php?id=100000209953179 Mar 21, 2011
  • seanahan Chasing one's tail seems like a quixotic activity. May 16, 2009
  • deusexmachina I named my dog Quixote, and he IS quixotic. May 16, 2009
  • ezzackly I just recently saw this word the other day for the first time and I beamed with excitement when I realized it was related to Don Quixote. May 9, 2009
  • whichbe I'm kind of surprised that this is the #2 most listed word here. What's so special about this word? It makes me think of an exotic quiz. Nov 12, 2008
  • bilby See quixotically. Nov 4, 2008
  • chained_bear Odd... I say that a lot too.
    ;) Nov 3, 2008
  • sionnach "I just want to get drunk as fast as I can" said Don, quixotically. Nov 3, 2008
  • muse25 -extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.

    -impulsive and often rashly unpredictable. Oct 23, 2008
  • karmicunderpath I can never remember what this damn word means Aug 21, 2007
  • erinoftheyear This word reminds me of one of those guys who hangs out at the bar everynight with his polyester shiny shirt and his gel'd up hair. It's used up, been had, and not as cool as it sounds. Aug 15, 2007
  • alguien It is "octopuses," definitely, not "octopi." The word octopus comes from Greek, not Latin, so the plural suffix -i is inappropriate.

    As for the pronunciation of "quixotic," Charles Harrington Elster, author of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, sanctions only kwik-SAHT-ik. I will continue to say kwik-SAHT-ik in English and reserve the more Spanishy pronunciation for when I am speaking Spanish. Mar 26, 2007
  • geekwad Matter of opinion, innit? I'd be more inclined to change the spelling.

    I think the whole idea of borrowing foreign rules for modifying words along with foreign words is dumb. It's "octopusses", dammit! Jan 24, 2007
  • joshleejosh Good point -- I see the word much more often than I hear it. In fact, I think I've only ever heard it spoken out loud in the context of debates over its pronunciation! Is there a synonym for "quixotic" that's more popular in conversation, or do people just not want to talk about tilting at windmills? Jan 17, 2007
  • valse Possible counterexamples of that, seanahan, would be words like jungian (yoong-ee-uhn) or wagnerian (vahg-neer-ee-uhn). When it derives from someone's name, that pronunciation seems to stick, at least part of the time. But after reading the tidbit on wikipedia about the spelling and pronunciation of "Quixote", I see it's a little bit more nuanced anyhow (technically it's medieval Castilian, not Spanish). Bah! This is a good word, I'm going to leave it alone (stop picking at it, that is) for fear that people will stop using it. I see it written much more often than I hear it spoken, anyway. Jan 12, 2007
  • seanahan There is a fundamental dichotomy here. The suffix "ic" is not Spanish at all. Therefore, adding "ic" to Quixote to create an adjective is not allowed. I'm not sure what the equivalent suffix would be in Spanish, but if you insist on being a stickler for pronunciation, then you should insist on using the Spanish suffix. To make an English adjective, it makes sense to change the pronunciation. Jan 10, 2007
  • tankexmortis I pronounce it "kee-ho-tik". I'm takin' it back! Jan 10, 2007
  • seanahan I've never heard anyone pronounce it as anything other than "quicks-ot-ic". Jan 7, 2007
  • geekwad I heard someone (who I thought aught to have known better) pronounce it as an English word recently. I'd never heard it that way before. It made my eyes cross. Jan 7, 2007
  • valse So true, billifer. As counterintuitive as it may sometimes seem, we should just chalk it up to idiosyncrasy(if that word wasn't previously used to describe words or language, it now is). And then the inconsistency's something to appreciate, I suppose.
    Jan 5, 2007
  • billifer I totally know where you're coming from, Valse. You're being neither persnickety nor pedantic. Unfortunately, English — especially when adapting foreign words and names — is one big miasma of bafflegab.

    I still spell "fish" as ghoti1 and "potato" as ghoughphtheightteeau. Jan 5, 2007
  • valse I feel like this word should be pronounced kee-ho-tik (it just occurred to me that standard IPA pronunciation would show up as a possible word entry). We don't say Don Kwik-sot-ay...but maybe I'm just being persnickety. Jan 4, 2007

‘quixotic’ has been looked up 4935 times, loved by 61 people, added to 395 lists, commented on 23 times, and has a Scrabble score of 26.