Utopian
[yoo-TOH-pee-ən]
Part of speech: adjective
Origin: Ancient Greek, mid 16th century
1.
Modeled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic.
Examples of Utopian in a sentence
"Jay believed in vegan utopian ideas and wished everyone would follow a plant-based diet."
"Many of Silicon Valley’s early utopian ideas didn’t ultimately work as foundations for successful tech companies."
About Utopian
“Utopian” is based on the name for an ideal world coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 work “Utopia.” More created the word “Utopia” by combining the Ancient Greek οὐ (“ou”), meaning “not,” and “τόπος (“tópos”), meaning “place, region.”Utopia was an imagined world that was not a real place. Within forty years of the publication of More’s “Utopia,” the adjective “utopian” had become an expression for ideas that aimed to create the idealized world of More’s book.
Did you Know?
Around the world, there are organized communities aiming to improve the standard of living through fresh ideas about housing and social interactions. These communities could all be called “utopian,” though their range is wide, extending from hippie communes to social housing to collective condominium developments. In the past, many communal living experiments were driven by purely utopian ideas and the challenge of trying to live in the most satisfying way. However, most modern projects are now tightly connected with environmental goals. They may still be called “utopian,” but they pair dreams of a perfect world with tangible goals of reducing waste and generating sustainable energy.
