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quixotic

kwɪkˈsɑːtɪkadjective

What does quixotic mean?

Chasing an ideal that is noble but hopelessly unrealistic.

Quixotic, six ways

PlainChasing an ideal that is noble but hopelessly unrealistic.
ADHDNoble, doomed, still trying. Big dream, no chance.
Gen ZGoing after something beautiful and completely unrealistic, and everyone can see it but you.
MetaphorCharging at windmills because you have decided they are giants.
FormalExceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical, in pursuit of a noble aim.
Like I’m 5Trying to do something brave that cannot really work, like fighting a windmill. That’s quixotic.

How to pronounce quixotic

kwik-SOT-ik/kwɪkˈsɑːtɪk/

Quixotic in a sentence

It was a quixotic plan to save the old cinema.
A quixotic campaign to bring back the payphone.
Critics called the expedition quixotic.

Synonyms for quixotic

idealisticGuided by ideals, plainer.
impracticalNot workable.
romanticDreamy, in the old sense.

Where quixotic comes from

After Don Quixote, the knight in Cervantes’s novel of 1605, who charged at windmills he took for giants.

Good to know

From Don Quixote, Cervantes’s knight who fought windmills. It is admiring and doubtful at once.

Quixotic meaning, on a Gloss card: Chasing an ideal that is noble but hopelessly unrealistic.

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