Meaning
An imaginary realm of wildly impractical or deluded notions; if someone lives in cloud cuckoo land, their beliefs or plans are hopelessly unrealistic. It is usually applied to over-optimistic forecasts, budgets and utopian schemes rather than to clinical delusion, and carries a teasing, dismissive tone. Informal and mocking; aimed at plans and predictions more often than at people. Regional use: Chiefly British English.
Origin
The name was coined by the Greek comic playwright Aristophanes in The Birds, in which the birds found a city in the sky and Pisthetairos, having rejected 'Sparta', proposes calling it Cloudcuckooland, Greek Nephelokokkygia. According to The Phrase Finder the term entered English in 1824, in Henry F. Cary's translation of the play, and German's parallel calque Wolkenkuckucksheim shows how the coinage was borrowed language by language. Unusually for an English expression, it began as a single word, cloudcuckooland, and was only later split into hyphenated or open forms, the reverse of the usual trend. Its modern career is chiefly British, spent mocking over-optimistic timetables and political promises.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- in cloud-cuckoo-land
- live in cloud cuckoo land
Usage Examples
- Expecting the whole team to learn Cantonese by March is pure cloud cuckoo land.
- Anyone who thinks this renovation will finish on budget is living in cloud cuckoo land.
- Economists dismissed the pledge to freeze rents and double housebuilding as cloud cuckoo land arithmetic.