See Shangri-La in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for Shangri-La meaning in English (8.8kB)
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "bo",
"3": "-"
},
"expansion": "Tibetan",
"name": "uder"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "bo",
"2": "ཞང",
"3": "རི",
"4": "ལ",
"gloss1": "name of a district of Ü-Tsang",
"gloss2": "mountain",
"gloss3": "pass",
"nocat": "1"
},
"expansion": "ཞང (zhang, “name of a district of Ü-Tsang”) + རི (ri, “mountain”) + ལ (la, “pass”)",
"name": "affix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton (1900–1954): see the quotation below. A Tibetan origin has been suggested, from ཞང (zhang, “name of a district of Ü-Tsang”) + རི (ri, “mountain”) + ལ (la, “pass”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "Shangri-Las",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "Shangri-La (plural Shangri-Las)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"Shan‧gri-La"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Arabic terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"parents": [
"Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"parents": [
"Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English undefined derivations",
"parents": [
"Undefined derivations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Fictional locations",
"orig": "en:Fictional locations",
"parents": [
"Fiction",
"Artistic works",
"Art",
"Culture",
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "[1933 September, James Hilton, Lost Horizon, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, St. Martin's Street, London, published October and November 1933 (2nd printing), →OCLC, page 64",
"text": "He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don't understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here—along the valley, I gathered—where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain-pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1976, Jean Franco, “Poetry as a Mode of Existence”, in César Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1st paperback edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, page 2",
"text": "The length of the journey gives a measure of the anachronism, which as [César] Vallejo said in one of his stories made the hill town a Shangri-La, forgotten by the rest of Peru.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989, Clive S. Thomas, “Understanding Interest Group Activity in the American States”, in D. K. Adams, editor, Studies in US Politics, Manchester, New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, page 182",
"text": "With the fragmented policy-making system which results, America is a Shangri-La for interest groups and lobbyists.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989, Grant Naylor [i.e., Rob Grant and Doug Naylor], Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, London: Penguin Books",
"text": "He couldn't believe it when he'd discovered there actually was a town called Bedford Falls. It seemed like fans of the film had all collected there to live out their lives in a self-created 1940s American Shangri-la.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2004, Otto von Stroheim, “Introduction”, in Tiki Art Now!: A Volcanic Eruption of Art, San Francisco, Calif.: Last Gasp of San Francisco; The Shooting Gallery, page 8",
"text": "Tiki Style was forged in the business of bars and restaurants and celebrated in backyard luaus and at theme parks like Disneyland and roadside attractions such as Tiki Gardens. As these ersatz Shangri-las competed to outdo each other with the latest tropical-inspired styles, the popularity of the neighborhood Tiki lounge soared.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, J. William Costerton, “Replacement of Acute Planctonic by Chronic Biofilm Diseases”, in Christina Eckey, editor, The Biofilm Primer, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISSN",
"text": "The human species was lucky, because the only time in the development of bacterial populations when diversity is sacrificed for reproductive expediency is during the exponential burst of growth that follows their discovery of an unprotected ecosystem. The two notable instances in which bacteria find these Shangri Las are in test tubes filled with fresh media and in naive animals that have not seen these particular bacteria in recent immunological memory.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Zhang Longxi, “In Search of a Land of Happiness: Utopia and Its Discontents”, in From Comparison to World Literature (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture), Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, page 103",
"text": "The desire for a better life in a better place, for a land of happiness, is perhaps one of the most basic human desires that has found many expressions in various forms—a paradise, a Golden Age, a Shangri-La, an ideal society or—generically speaking—a utopia.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A place of complete bliss, delight, and peace, especially one seen as an escape from ordinary life; a paradise."
],
"id": "en-Shangri-La-en-noun-7w0wyH7G",
"links": [
[
"place",
"place#Noun"
],
[
"complete",
"complete#Adjective"
],
[
"bliss",
"bliss"
],
[
"delight",
"delight#Noun"
],
[
"peace",
"peace"
],
[
"escape",
"escape#Noun"
],
[
"ordinary",
"ordinary"
],
[
"life",
"life"
],
[
"paradise",
"paradise"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "paradise"
},
{
"word": "utopia"
},
{
"word": "Shangri-la"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"roman": "šanḡrilā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "شَانْغْرِيلَا"
},
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"roman": "šangrilā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "شَانْغْرِيلَا"
},
{
"code": "my",
"lang": "Burmese",
"roman": "hran-ga.rila",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "ရှန်ဂရီလာ"
},
{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Xangri-La"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "Xiānggélǐlā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "香格里拉"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "shìwàitáoyuán",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "世外桃源"
},
{
"code": "eo",
"lang": "Esperanto",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Ŝangrilao"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Shangri-La"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "Shangurira",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "シャングリラ"
},
{
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"roman": "Syanggeurilla",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "샹그릴라"
},
{
"code": "mn",
"lang": "Mongolian",
"roman": "Šangri-La",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Шангри-Ла"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "xangri-lá"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "Šangri-Lá",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Шангри-Ла́"
},
{
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "cõi bồng lai"
},
{
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "chốn bồng lai"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"James Hilton",
"Shangri-La City"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌʃæŋɡɹɪˈlɑː/"
},
{
"rhymes": "-ɑː"
},
{
"audio": "en-au-Shangri-La.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/93/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "Shangri-La"
}
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "bo",
"3": "-"
},
"expansion": "Tibetan",
"name": "uder"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "bo",
"2": "ཞང",
"3": "རི",
"4": "ལ",
"gloss1": "name of a district of Ü-Tsang",
"gloss2": "mountain",
"gloss3": "pass",
"nocat": "1"
},
"expansion": "ཞང (zhang, “name of a district of Ü-Tsang”) + རི (ri, “mountain”) + ལ (la, “pass”)",
"name": "affix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton (1900–1954): see the quotation below. A Tibetan origin has been suggested, from ཞང (zhang, “name of a district of Ü-Tsang”) + རི (ri, “mountain”) + ལ (la, “pass”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "Shangri-Las",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "Shangri-La (plural Shangri-Las)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"Shan‧gri-La"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"Arabic terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"English 3-syllable words",
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms derived from Tibetan",
"English terms derived from toponyms",
"English terms with IPA pronunciation",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations",
"English undefined derivations",
"Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"Rhymes:English/ɑː",
"Rhymes:English/ɑː/3 syllables",
"en:Fictional locations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "[1933 September, James Hilton, Lost Horizon, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, St. Martin's Street, London, published October and November 1933 (2nd printing), →OCLC, page 64",
"text": "He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don't understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here—along the valley, I gathered—where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain-pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1976, Jean Franco, “Poetry as a Mode of Existence”, in César Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1st paperback edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, page 2",
"text": "The length of the journey gives a measure of the anachronism, which as [César] Vallejo said in one of his stories made the hill town a Shangri-La, forgotten by the rest of Peru.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989, Clive S. Thomas, “Understanding Interest Group Activity in the American States”, in D. K. Adams, editor, Studies in US Politics, Manchester, New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, page 182",
"text": "With the fragmented policy-making system which results, America is a Shangri-La for interest groups and lobbyists.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989, Grant Naylor [i.e., Rob Grant and Doug Naylor], Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, London: Penguin Books",
"text": "He couldn't believe it when he'd discovered there actually was a town called Bedford Falls. It seemed like fans of the film had all collected there to live out their lives in a self-created 1940s American Shangri-la.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2004, Otto von Stroheim, “Introduction”, in Tiki Art Now!: A Volcanic Eruption of Art, San Francisco, Calif.: Last Gasp of San Francisco; The Shooting Gallery, page 8",
"text": "Tiki Style was forged in the business of bars and restaurants and celebrated in backyard luaus and at theme parks like Disneyland and roadside attractions such as Tiki Gardens. As these ersatz Shangri-las competed to outdo each other with the latest tropical-inspired styles, the popularity of the neighborhood Tiki lounge soared.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, J. William Costerton, “Replacement of Acute Planctonic by Chronic Biofilm Diseases”, in Christina Eckey, editor, The Biofilm Primer, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISSN",
"text": "The human species was lucky, because the only time in the development of bacterial populations when diversity is sacrificed for reproductive expediency is during the exponential burst of growth that follows their discovery of an unprotected ecosystem. The two notable instances in which bacteria find these Shangri Las are in test tubes filled with fresh media and in naive animals that have not seen these particular bacteria in recent immunological memory.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Zhang Longxi, “In Search of a Land of Happiness: Utopia and Its Discontents”, in From Comparison to World Literature (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture), Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, page 103",
"text": "The desire for a better life in a better place, for a land of happiness, is perhaps one of the most basic human desires that has found many expressions in various forms—a paradise, a Golden Age, a Shangri-La, an ideal society or—generically speaking—a utopia.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A place of complete bliss, delight, and peace, especially one seen as an escape from ordinary life; a paradise."
],
"links": [
[
"place",
"place#Noun"
],
[
"complete",
"complete#Adjective"
],
[
"bliss",
"bliss"
],
[
"delight",
"delight#Noun"
],
[
"peace",
"peace"
],
[
"escape",
"escape#Noun"
],
[
"ordinary",
"ordinary"
],
[
"life",
"life"
],
[
"paradise",
"paradise"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "paradise"
},
{
"word": "utopia"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"James Hilton",
"Shangri-La City"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌʃæŋɡɹɪˈlɑː/"
},
{
"rhymes": "-ɑː"
},
{
"audio": "en-au-Shangri-La.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/93/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/En-au-Shangri-La.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Shangri-la"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"roman": "šanḡrilā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "شَانْغْرِيلَا"
},
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"roman": "šangrilā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "شَانْغْرِيلَا"
},
{
"code": "my",
"lang": "Burmese",
"roman": "hran-ga.rila",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "ရှန်ဂရီလာ"
},
{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Xangri-La"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "Xiānggélǐlā",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "香格里拉"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "shìwàitáoyuán",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "世外桃源"
},
{
"code": "eo",
"lang": "Esperanto",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Ŝangrilao"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Shangri-La"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "Shangurira",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "シャングリラ"
},
{
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"roman": "Syanggeurilla",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "샹그릴라"
},
{
"code": "mn",
"lang": "Mongolian",
"roman": "Šangri-La",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "Шангри-Ла"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "xangri-lá"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "Šangri-Lá",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Шангри-Ла́"
},
{
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "cõi bồng lai"
},
{
"code": "vi",
"lang": "Vietnamese",
"sense": "a place of complete bliss, delight, and peace",
"word": "chốn bồng lai"
}
],
"word": "Shangri-La"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.