"fool's paradise" meaning in English

See fool's paradise in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-fool's paradise.ogg [Australia] Forms: fools' paradises [plural]
Etymology: From Middle English foles paradise, folis paradyce, first recorded in the Paston Letters (1462). Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|foles paradise}} Middle English foles paradise, {{m|enm|folis paradyce}} folis paradyce Head templates: {{en-noun|fools' paradises}} fool's paradise (plural fools' paradises)
  1. (idiomatic) A state of happiness due to illusion or false hope. Wikipedia link: Paston Letters Tags: idiomatic Translations (happiness based on illusion): pilvilinna (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-fool's_paradise-en-noun-TQqGlazf Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for fool's paradise meaning in English (2.9kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "foles paradise"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English foles paradise",
      "name": "inh"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "enm",
        "2": "folis paradyce"
      },
      "expansion": "folis paradyce",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle English foles paradise, folis paradyce, first recorded in the Paston Letters (1462).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fools' paradises",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fools' paradises"
      },
      "expansion": "fool's paradise (plural fools' paradises)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1592, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet",
          "text": "Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bade me inquire you out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself: but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1959, John Knowles, chapter 3, in A Separate Peace",
          "text": "The Devon School record books contained a mistake, a lie, and nobody knew it but Finny and me. A. Hopkins Parker was living in a fool's paradise, wherever he was. His defeated name remained in bronze on the school record plaque, while Finny deliberately evaded an athletic honor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 13, Jenny Booth, “Mean employers blamed for pensions gap”, in TimesOnline, London",
          "text": "A report by the Pensions Commission warned that the number who were failing to save enough for their retirement was higher than 12 million, and said that Britain had been living in a \"fool's paradise\" for 25 years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A state of happiness due to illusion or false hope."
      ],
      "id": "en-fool's_paradise-en-noun-TQqGlazf",
      "links": [
        [
          "happiness",
          "happiness"
        ],
        [
          "illusion",
          "illusion"
        ],
        [
          "false",
          "false"
        ],
        [
          "hope",
          "hope"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A state of happiness due to illusion or false hope."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "happiness based on illusion",
          "word": "pilvilinna"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Paston Letters"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fool's paradise.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c5/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fool's paradise"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "foles paradise"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English foles paradise",
      "name": "inh"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "enm",
        "2": "folis paradyce"
      },
      "expansion": "folis paradyce",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle English foles paradise, folis paradyce, first recorded in the Paston Letters (1462).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fools' paradises",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fools' paradises"
      },
      "expansion": "fool's paradise (plural fools' paradises)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms derived from Middle English",
        "English terms inherited from Middle English",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1592, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet",
          "text": "Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bade me inquire you out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself: but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1959, John Knowles, chapter 3, in A Separate Peace",
          "text": "The Devon School record books contained a mistake, a lie, and nobody knew it but Finny and me. A. Hopkins Parker was living in a fool's paradise, wherever he was. His defeated name remained in bronze on the school record plaque, while Finny deliberately evaded an athletic honor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 13, Jenny Booth, “Mean employers blamed for pensions gap”, in TimesOnline, London",
          "text": "A report by the Pensions Commission warned that the number who were failing to save enough for their retirement was higher than 12 million, and said that Britain had been living in a \"fool's paradise\" for 25 years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A state of happiness due to illusion or false hope."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "happiness",
          "happiness"
        ],
        [
          "illusion",
          "illusion"
        ],
        [
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          "false"
        ],
        [
          "hope",
          "hope"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A state of happiness due to illusion or false hope."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Paston Letters"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fool's paradise.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c5/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/En-au-fool%27s_paradise.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "happiness based on illusion",
      "word": "pilvilinna"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fool's paradise"
}

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.