- pessimism
[pessimism 词源字典] - pessimism: [18] The first English writer on record as using pessimism was the poet Coleridge, in the 1790s. But he employed it for the ‘worst possible state’. The modern sense ‘expecting the worst’ did not emerge until the early 19th century. The word was probably coined first in French, and was based on Latin pessimus ‘worst’.
[pessimism etymology, pessimism origin, 英语词源] - pessimism (n.)
- 1794 "worst condition possible," borrowed (by Coleridge) from French pessimisme, formed (on model of French optimisme) from Latin pessimus "worst," originally "bottom-most," from PIE *ped-samo-, superlative of root *pes- "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot" (see foot (n.)). As a name given to the doctrines of Schopenhauer, Hartmann, etc., that this is the worst possible world, or that everything tends toward evil, it is first recorded 1835, from German pessimismus (Schopenhauer, 1819). The attempt to make a verb of it as pessimize (1862) did not succeed.
