Utopically

[Tom Kysilko]

New to me:  At a conference in MD this week, I heard "Utopically" used by
speakers twice as a sentence-modifying adverb roughly equivalent to
"Ideally" or "If everything goes right" or perhaps even "Hopefully".
Something like:  "Utopically, this query will give you the results you
want."  One speaker was a DC-based Federal bureaucrat; the other was a
database administrator from Jackson MS.  Members of the audience near me
raised their eyebrows, and I heard someone mutter "I'll bet that's not in
the dictionary."

"Utopical" and "Utopically" are not in RHWUD2 or MW3, although "Utopistic"
is in both.  I couldn't find them in the ADS-L Archives.

Google gives 100 hits.  Many, maybe most, of them have some connection to
utopias or utopian thinking, or at least the use can be contrued as making
a comparison to utopian thinking.  Others are equivalent to "in an ideal
world."  And still others use the word as above, involving no reference at
all to utopias or utopian thinking.  Many are not in a sentence-modifying
position.

  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA