r/Modern_Family

Hands down one of the best scenes of the show 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Why would he even post this?

just thought this was a sweet moment between them. they don’t share too many of those lol

Sanguine gets used as a dressier "optimistic", and it almost works, but the word comes with a condition attached. You are sanguine about something that could reasonably go badly. Sanguine about the layoffs, about the diagnosis, about their chances in the second half: all fine. "I'm sanguine about the weather on Saturday" is off, and off in a way people can hear even when they can't say why. Nothing is at stake, so there is nothing to be composed about.

That is what the one-word gloss loses. Optimistic points forward at a good outcome. Sanguine points at a threat and declines to panic. Hopeful and upbeat are cheerful; sanguine is unbothered. The first time I saw it used about someone's stock portfolio I assumed it was a mistake, and it wasn't, because money is exactly the kind of thing you can lose.

Two traps worth knowing. The register is formal and written, so out loud it can come off slightly pleased with itself, and "not worried" usually does the same work. And the close relatives went somewhere else entirely: sanguinary means bloodthirsty, sanguineous means relating to blood, all three off the same Latin sanguis. "A sanguinary outlook" is not a more impressive way to say a hopeful one.