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VISIONARY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person with unusual powers of foresight
Synonyms:
illusionist; seer; visionary
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("visionary" is a kind of...):
intellect; intellectual (a person who uses the mind creatively)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "visionary"):
anticipant; anticipator (one who anticipates)
diviner (someone who claims to discover hidden knowledge with the aid of supernatural powers)
fantast; futurist (someone who predicts the future)
forecaster; predictor; prognosticator; soothsayer (someone who makes predictions of the future (usually on the basis of special knowledge))
Sense 2
Meaning:
A person given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("visionary" is a kind of...):
individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "visionary"):
dreamer; idealist (someone guided more by ideals than by practical considerations)
Derivation:
visionary (not practical or realizable; speculative)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Not practical or realizable; speculative
Example:
visionary schemes for getting rich
Synonyms:
airy; impractical; Laputan; visionary; windy
Classified under:
Similar:
utopian (characterized by or aspiring to impracticable perfection)
Derivation:
vision (a vivid mental image)
visionary (a person given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible)
Context examples:
When you ask for money—and there will be days in March that you will be favorably disposed to do so—you will need to stick to the facts of the job at hand and save your best, most visionary ideas to show next year.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested with Roderick Random's knapsack in the days of yore; and, instead of going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our house;—then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
With many planets crowded into your work-a-day sector (sixth house), including taskmaster Saturn, transformative Pluto, good-fortune Jupiter, and active Mars, all in earth-sign Capricorn, you will have to come across as practical rather than visionary.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
