Cloudcuckooland

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

  1. a state of mind or imaginary realm characterized by impractical fantasies, irrational beliefs, and disconnect from concrete reality
  2. an illusory domain where nonsensical thinking and unrealistic notions flourish without grounding in factual circumstances
  3. a fantastical place of whimsical ideas and delusions where one can be detached from the realities of the world and engage in fanciful thoughts

Etymology: In 414 BC an Athenian audience watched two of their fellow citizens give up on Athens altogether. In Aristophanes' comedy "The Birds", performed at the City Dionysia that spring, the fast-talking Peisetaerus and his friend Euelpides flee the city's lawsuits and debts. Then Peisetaerus persuades the birds to build a walled city in the sky, halfway between heaven and earth. The plan is brilliantly cynical. With a city in the air, the birds can intercept the smoke of sacrifices rising from below and starve the gods into handing over power. After weighing other suggestions with Euelpides, Peisetaerus names the new city "Nephelokokkugia", from "nephelē", cloud, and "kokkux", cuckoo, a bird whose Greek name, like the English one, imitates its call. The scheme works, after a fashion. The city is soon pestered by the same freeloaders Peisetaerus fled: a hack poet, a peddler of oracles, the astronomer Meton offering to survey the air, a seller of ready-made laws. He beats them all off. In the end the gods yield, and he weds Basileia, the personified spirit of sovereignty, as ruler of the universe. The man who ran from politics has become a tyrant in the clouds. The play opened only months after Athens had launched its vast expedition to conquer Sicily. That venture ended in catastrophe in 413 BC, and many readers have since heard in the comedy a city's appetite for grand, airborne schemes. English took the name over piece by piece, translating each part, "cloud" plus "cuckoo" plus "land". German did the same with "Wolkenkuckucksheim". Cut loose from the play, the phrase came to mean any realm of absurdly hopeful fantasy, usually someone else's. English lent it extra bite, because "cuckoo" had meant a simpleton since the late 1500s. Aristophanes chose a bird; English speakers heard a fool.

Synonyms: fantasy world, utopia

Antonyms: reality, real world