bottom-dwelling attitude
- noun
- Informal
:
actitud pesimista
- Her bottom-dwelling attitude made it hard for her to enjoy good news.
Examples
-
Don't let his bottom-dwelling attitude influence your excitement about the project.
-
Despite the team's achievements, he maintained a bottom-dwelling attitude throughout the season.
-
Don't adopt that bottom-dwelling attitude!
-
Why do you always have such a bottom-dwelling attitude?
-
Despite the team's successes, his bottom-dwelling attitude prevented him from celebrating their victories.
-
Her bottom-dwelling attitude overshadowed the positive feedback she received from her manager.
-
Even when things improve, he tends to revert to a bottom-dwelling attitude, focusing only on potential problems.
Synonyms
28
4.6
A way of thinking that expects bad things to happen
10
3.5
A way of thinking that expects bad things to happen
2
6.5
A person who often sees the negative side of things
A negative way of thinking that expects bad things to happen
Antonyms
How Pessimistic
Surface Forms
Morphology
bottom-dwelling + attitude
The compound 'bottom-dwelling' is transparently composed from 'bottom' (a low place) + 'dwelling' (living/staying), so the literal sense 'located at the bottom' is clear; applied to 'attitude' this creates a spatial-to-affective metaphor suggesting an outlook that 'stays low' or focuses on low/worst aspects. The mapping from that literal spatial sense to the abstract meaning 'consistently negative or pessimistic outlook' requires a metaphorical inference that may not be fully predictable for a B1 learner without exposure.
Etymology
The phrase bottom-dwelling attitude gives a picture of animals that live on the bottom of the sea and keep dwelling there in the dark, always looking down. One popular idea says this image became a way to describe people who focus on the worst parts of life, so it now means being 'negative' or 'pessimistic'.