Cloud cuckoo land

Cloud cuckoo land

Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. ("You're living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.") It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.

The reference comes from The Birds,[1] a play by Aristophanes in which Tereus helps Pisthetairos (which can be translated as "Mr. Trusting") and Euelpides ("Mr. Hopeful") erect a perfect city in the clouds, to be named Cloud Cuckoo Land (Νεφελοκοκκυγία or Nephelokokkygia).

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the word (German Wolkenkuckucksheim) in his publication On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813,[2] as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation[3] and in other places. Here, he gave it the figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land.

Uses in politics

  • U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace (later U.S. Vice President in Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term) used the term to describe the unrealistically inflated value of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange just before the crash of 1929 that signaled the onset of the Great Depression. In his 1936 book, Whose Constitution? An Inquiry into the General Welfare, Wallace describes a cartoon in a popular weekly magazine which "pictured an airplane in an endurance flight refueling in mid-air, and made fun of the old fashioned economist down below who was saying it couldn't be done. The economic aeroplane was to keep on gaining elevation indefinitely, with the millennium just around a cloud" (p. 75). Wallace wrote that Wall Street's practice of lending money to Europe after World War I "to pay interest on the [war reparations] debts she owed us and to buy the products we wanted to sell her … was the international refueling device that for 12 years kept our economic aeroplane above the towering peaks of our credit structure and the massive wall of our tariff, in Cloud-Cuckoo Land" (p. 77).

Other uses

  • A British festival named Cloud Cuckoo land occurs annually in summer, formally named Godsplash. The festival changed its name in time for the 2011 festival. [6]
  • Cloud Cuckooland is a level from the Nintendo 64 game Banjo-Tooie.

References

  1. ^ dictionary.reference.com listing of Cloud Cuckoo Land
  2. ^ On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason § 34, p. 133.
  3. ^ The World as Will and Representation Vol. I, Part 4, § 53, p. 352.
  4. ^ news24.com
  5. ^ YouTube
  6. ^ [1]

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Look at other dictionaries:

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — n. an imaginary place where fantasy and illusion predominate; it is a place where you say people are when they seem optimistically out of touch with reality. [WordNet 1.5 +PJC] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — cloud cuckoo ,land noun someone is (living) in cloud cuckoo land INFORMAL used for saying that someone is silly if they believe that there are no problems in a situation …   Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • cloud cuckoo land — If someone has ideas or plans that are completely unrealistic, they are living on cloud cuckoo land …   The small dictionary of idiomes

  • cloud cuckoo land — ► NOUN ▪ a state of unrealistic or absurdly over optimistic fantasy. ORIGIN translation of Greek Nephelokokkugia, the name of a city built by the birds in Aristophanes comedy Birds, from nephel cloud + kokkux cuckoo …   English terms dictionary

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — [kloud΄ko͞o′ko͞o land΄] n. a place or condition that is fanciful, lacking in reality, impractically utopian, etc …   English World dictionary

  • Cloud Cuckoo Land — Imaginary city built in air, translating Aristophanes Nephelokokkygia in The Birds (414 B.C.E.) …   Etymology dictionary

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — N UNCOUNT: also a N (disapproval) If you say that someone is living in cloud cuckoo land, you are criticizing them because they think there are no problems and that things will happen exactly as they want them to, when this is obviously not the… …   English dictionary

  • cloud cuckoo land —    If someone has ideas or plans that are completely unrealistic, they are living on cloud cuckoo land.   (Dorking School Dictionary)    ***    This expression refers to an imaginary unrealistic place where everything is perfect and impossible… …   English Idioms & idiomatic expressions

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — /klowd kooh kooh land , kook ooh /, n. an idealized, illusory domain of imagination; cloudland: the cloud cuckoo land of technicolor cartoon whimsy. [1815 25; trans. of Gk Nephelokokkygía, the realm which separates the gods from mankind in… …   Universalium

  • cloud-cuckoo-land — UK / US noun someone is (living) in cloud cuckoo land informal used for saying that someone is silly if they believe that there are no problems in a situation …   English dictionary

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