Nephelokokkygia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An impossible, fanciful paradise constructed high in the sky, as imagined by the characters in Aristophanes' comedy The Birds
2. A fantastical city of the air, a utopian dream built among the clouds and out of reach of ordinary reality
3. A whimsical, unattainable ideal of perfection, like a castle in the sky built by people who never leave the clouds

Etymology: "Nephelokokkygia" is the name Aristophanes gave to the imaginary city that the two Athenian protagonists of his comedy "Birds" set out to found in the sky. The name combines Greek "nephelē" ("cloud") and "kokkux" ("cuckoo"), so it means "cloud-cuckoo-land," a place of utopian escape from the cares of the everyday world. The coinage is a deliberate piece of comic invention. Aristophanes, writing in Athens in 414 BCE, drew on the cuckoo as a bird associated with foolishness and on the cloud as the realm between earth and heaven. Speakers of Greek would have heard the absurdity at once: a city built not on solid ground but among the clouds, inhabited by birds. English took the word in the nineteenth century as a term for any fanciful, impractical scheme or state of mind. Its formation follows the Greek pattern of compounding, so it is a technical-sounding word that is really a comic joke at its core.