pessimise

present singular third person pessimises · participle present pessimising · participle past pessimised · past pessimised

1. CommonwealthUKalternativeAlternative spelling of pessimize.

   The pessimising and desponding tone of the Tory Foreign Minister's correspondence, in the early part of 1859, can hardly be read without a shudder.

   1865 August 19, “The Fifty Years’ Peace between Britain and France”, in The Illustrated London News, volume XLVII, numbers 1329–1330, London: Printed & published by George C. Leighton […], →OCLC, page 175, column 1

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   Glancing at the developments of individualities in memberdom, it may be said that Lord Elebo availed himself of the last appearance in the House of the Army Estimates to repeat the attacks on the physical condition of the men of the service which he had so elaborately made a week or two ago; and he pessimised on the subject, if possible, with the same exaggeration as before.

   1875 May 29, “Sketches in Parliament”, in The Illustrated London News, volume LXVI, number 1868, London: Printed & published by George C. Leighton […], →OCLC, page 510, column 1

   Certainly it was not in the interest of the Government to come forward and propose any additional taxation if they could, with consistency and with satisfaction to heir own consciences, have avoided it, and he did not think his two previous Budgets showed that it was in his nature to pessimise or to take desponding views.

   1876 May 15, Sir Stafford Northcote (Chancellor of the Exchequer), “Customs and Inland Revenue Bill.—[Bill 124.]: Second Reading”, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, […] (House of Commons), volume CCXXIX (Third Series), 3rd volume of the session, London: Published by Cornelius Buck, at the office for “Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” […], →OCLC, column 751

   Pessimists, no more than poets, love each other, and even when they work together it is one thing to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced junior, even though the latter's college career may have included more exhibitions—nay, even pot-huntings—than one's own.

   1926, Rudyard Kipling, “The United Idolaters”, in Debits and Credits, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 85

   Said very likely [...] the war means that the barbarian will gradually freeze out culture. Nor have we improved. Tom [James Joyce] & Saxon [Sydney-Turner] said the Greeks were more thoroughly civilised. The slave was not so much a slave as ours are. Clive also pessimised—saw the light going out gradually. So I flung some rather crazy theories into the air.

   1984, Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 1st American edition, volumes V (1936–1941), New York, N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, →ISBN, page 268