quixotic
adjective
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Quixotic Has Roots in Literature
If you guessed that quixotic has something to do with Don Quixote, you're absolutely right. The hero of Miguel de Cervantes' 17th-century Spanish novel El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (in English "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha") didn't change the world by tilting at windmills, but he did leave a linguistic legacy in English. The adjective quixotic is based on his name and has been used to describe unrealistic idealists since at least the early 18th century. The novel has given English other words as well. Dulcinea, the name of Quixote's beloved, has come to mean "mistress" or "sweetheart," and rosinante, which is sometimes used to refer to an old horse, comes from the name of the hero's less-than-gallant steed, Rocinante.
Examples of quixotic in a Sentence
Walter Kirn, New York Times Book Review, 22 Feb. 2009
The history of biblical oil prospecting is filled with quixotic quests and colorful characters, starting with Welsie Hancock, a wealthy California man who in the 1960s dreamed that Jesus told him he would find black gold in the Holy Land. He sunk his entire fortune into two dry holes.
—Mariah Blake, Mother Jones, January and February 2008
Mumey had announced his candidacy as an independent in the partisan election, which meant that he needed 2,300 signatures of registered voters in order to get on the ballot in the fall. It seemed a quixotic adventure, given the small size of Celebration and Mumey's lack of name recognition outside the town.
—Douglas Frantz et al., Celebration, USA, 1999
They had quixotic dreams about the future.
in this age of giant chain stores, any attempt at operating an independent bookstore must be regarded as quixotic
Joan Meiners, AZCentral.com, 27 Oct. 2025
That a war was on, or latent, or menacing during the whole shooting period set the quixotic mood in which most of the obstacles were confronted.
—Susan Sontag, Vogue, 26 Oct. 2025
Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was hot on the trail of the next great American true crime documentary — a riveting account of a highway patrolman’s quixotic effort to identify and capture the infamous Zodiac Killer.
—Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 16 Oct. 2025
Many of Herzog’s films capture that sense of a quixotic, even bizarre quest, an antihero searching for some kind of truth that may be obvious only to himself.
—Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for quixotic
Cite this Entry
“Quixotic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quixotic. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
quixotic
adjective
from Don Quixote, hero of the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes
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