prisoner of hope

English

Etymology

Translation of the biblical phrase אֲסִירֵ֖י הַתִּקְוָ֑ה (assirei ha-tikvah) found in Zechariah 9:12. See אָסִיר (asír, “prisoner”) and תִּקְוָה (tikvá, “hope”) for more.

Noun

prisoner of hope (plural prisoners of hope)

1. One who remains hopeful in spite of circumstances that seem hopeless.
   • 2009, V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic/Petals on the Wind, →ISBN, page 3:

     Born so brightly colored, and fading duller through all those long, grim, dreary, nightmarish days when we were held prisoners of hope, and kept captives by greed.

   • 2013, Vaidehi Ramanathan, Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship: Rights, Access, Pedagogies, →ISBN:

     Optimism is a notion that there's sufficient evidence that would allow us to infer that if we keep doing what we're doing, things will get better. I don't believe that. I'm a prisoner of hope, that's something else. Cutting against the grain, against the evidence'.

   • 2013, David Bzdak, Joanna Crosby, Seth Vannatta, The Wire and Philosophy: This America, Man, →ISBN, page 254:

     And every genuine educator is a prisoner of hope. The road to all liberation through self-knowing is a path of despair, but all roads have their empty horizons and infinite beyonds.

   • 2013, Tom Panaggio, The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur's Unexpected Edge, →ISBN:

     A prisoner of hope is an entrepreneur unknowingly trapped in a deceptive world where reality is masked by that person's desire to succeed. Such entrepreneurs are optimistic, convinced that what they want to happen will happen, yet it will never happen because they are not doing, only hoping.