Meaning
An easy, pleasant, self-indulgent course of life or action that leads to harm, ruin, or damnation. It always carries the sense of a deceptively attractive route, so the destination is bad even though the way feels delightful. Literary and slightly formal; usually ironic or moralizing in tone. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The phrase was coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet (written circa 1599-1602), where Ophelia warns her brother Laertes not to be like pastors who preach the steep road to heaven while they themselves 'the primrose path of dalliance treads'. Shakespeare used a variant again in Macbeth, where the Porter speaks of 'the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire'. Dictionary.com dates the phrase to 1595-1605, consistent with the Hamlet coinage. Later writers kept it alive, notably Oscar Wilde in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891), and D. H. Lawrence titled a 1922 short story 'The Primrose Path'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- lead someone down the primrose path
- primrose path of dalliance
- the primrose way
Usage Examples
- Skipping lectures seemed harmless at first, but it was the primrose path to failing the year.
- The recruiter's promise of easy riches struck her as a primrose path straight to a scam.
- He chose the primrose path of leisure over the grind of building the business, and regretted it by spring.