SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
visionary
adjective
Showing imaginative insight about future possibilities, sometimes without enough practical detail.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Imaginative about the future
Closest synonyms
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topVisionary can praise insight or question practicality. Utopian and impractical suggest that an ideal may be difficult to realize; prophetic implies predictive foresight.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See visionary in use
Her visionary proposal gave the group an ambitious goal that still needed a workable schedule.
For Nolan, the intrinsic pleasure of arranging shapes belonged to the activity itself, even when nobody offered a prize or public praise. A small exhibition could also have merit because its thoughtful selection invited viewers to notice connections among the works. His friend's visionary proposal imagined a network of shared neighborhood galleries, a possibility far beyond their immediate display.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license