Meaning

2 senses

  1. One who is persistently cheerful and optimistic, even when given cause not to be so.

    You call her an optimist, but I call her an obnoxious Pollyanna.

  2. (Mid Atlantic, Pennsylvania, Southeastern, US, colloquial)A secret Santa gift exchange.

Examples

2 sentences

  1. I think Mary is a bit of a Pollyanna.

    shekitten · Tatoeba · CC0 · A2Open on TatoebaReport a problem

  2. I called Tom a Pollyanna.

    menaud · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FR · A1Open on TatoebaReport a problem

Translations

2 languages

Origin

From the name of the protagonist in the 1913 novel Pollyanna, by Eleanor Porter.

From the name of the protagonist in the 1913 novel Pollyanna, by Eleanor Porter.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: Pollyannas

Word family

1 related words
Relatedquixotic

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
polluteA2polluterpollutionA1poloB2poltergeistpoly

Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.

Pollyanna — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto