Romanticizer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who tends to view people, events, or situations through an idealized and sentimental lens, glossing over their harsher realities
2. Someone who portrays or regards life, history, or other people as more noble, beautiful, or heroic than they truly are
3. One who habitually invests things with a glamorous or dreamy quality, imagining them in a more appealing light than the facts support

Etymology: "Romanticizer" is a plain build on "romanticize" with the agent suffix "-er," meaning one who romanticizes. The ancestor of "romanticize" is "romantic," which entered English through Old French "romanz" and "romaunt," terms for vernacular works written in the Romance languages rather than Latin, the language of learned texts. Those romances were tales of chivalry and adventure, so a word tied to the Roman Empire ended up describing fanciful, idealized storytelling. The suffix "-ize" arrived via Late Latin "-izare," borrowed into Greek as "-izein," and reached English through Middle French and Middle English. Adding it to "romantic" produced "romanticize," meaning to treat something in an idealized, imaginative way, and the agent form "romanticizer" followed from that.

Synonyms: romantic, idealist, dreamer

Antonyms: realist, pragmatist