Paradisus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term referring to an idealized place or state of perfect happiness and bliss often associated with a garden or heaven ; a literary or historical designation for a location conceived as a paradise or utopia ; a classical or poetic expression denoting a realm of supreme delight and tranquility
2. A word historically used to depict a flawless and serene environment symbolizing ultimate joy and contentment ; a descriptive label for a mythical or religious garden thought to be inhabited by divine beings or the blessed ; a term employed in cultural texts to represent a perfect condition or place free from suffering
3. An expression indicating a heavenly domain or idyllic setting characterized by peace and pleasure ; a name given in artistic and religious contexts to a sublime retreat from worldly troubles ; a phrase conveying the concept of an unspoiled and joyous refuge beyond ordinary life

Etymology: "Paradisus" is the Latin form of a Greek word, "paradeisos," which originally meant an enclosed park or walled garden. The Greek term was borrowed from an old Iranian word for an enclosure, and it appears in Greek writing from the time of Xenophon, who used it of the royal parks of Persian kings. Those parks were walled game reserves and gardens, so the first sense was a fenced, cultivated space rather than any idea of happiness or heaven. The Greek word passed into Latin as "paradisus," and Latin writers used it in that same literal sense of a park or orchard. The shift toward a perfect place came through the Greek Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible, where "paradeisos" renders the Hebrew word for the garden of Eden. Christian writers then took the term as the name of that original garden, and it gradually came to mean an ideal, blissful state.

Synonyms: paradise, heaven, utopia, Eden, nirvana

Antonyms: hell, inferno, abyss, dystopia, purgatory