Word of the Day

: February 19, 2018

sanguine

adjective SANG-gwun

What It Means

1 : bloodred

2 a : consisting of or relating to blood

b : bloodthirsty, sanguinary

c : ruddy

3 : having blood as the predominating bodily humor; also : having the bodily conformation and temperament held characteristic of such predominance and marked by sturdiness, ruddy color, and cheerfulness

4 : confident, optimistic

sanguine in Context

The coach insisted that he was sanguine about his team's chances in the playoffs, even though his star player was injured.

"Some of us hear the term AI [artificial intelligence] and picture a dystopian future where people lose jobs and control to robots who possess artificial—and superior—intelligence to human beings. Others are more sanguine about our ability to control and harness technology to achieve more and greater things." — Georgene Huang, Forbes, 27 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

If you're the sort of cheery soul who always looks on the bright side no matter what happens, you have a sanguine personality. Sanguine describes one of the temperaments that ancient and medieval scholars believed was caused by an abundance of one of the four humors (another is phlegmatic, an adjective that describes the calm, cool, and collected among us). The word sanguine derives from sanguineus, Latin for "blood" or "bloody," and over the more than 600 years it's been in use it has had meanings ranging from "bloodthirsty" and "bloodred" to today's most common one, "confident, optimistic."