adjective, noun, plural -ar⋅ies.| 1. | given to or characterized by fanciful, not presently workable, or unpractical ideas, views, or schemes: a visionary enthusiast. |
| 2. | given to or concerned with seeing visions. |
| 3. | belonging to or seen in a vision. |
| 4. | unreal; imaginary: visionary evils. |
| 5. | purely idealistic or speculative; impractical; unrealizable: a visionary scheme. |
| 6. | of, pertaining to, or proper to a vision. |
| 7. | a person of unusually keen foresight. |
| 8. | a person who sees visions. |
| 9. | a person who is given to audacious, highly speculative, or impractical ideas or schemes; dreamer. |
Computing
Word Origin & History
visionary
1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to "see" things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a computer. The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See SMOP, AI-complete.)
2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.
[The Jargon File]