One Thousand and One Nights
- proper noun
- Literature
:
Las mil y una noches
- Have you read One Thousand and One Nights?
Examples
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Many modern tales have been inspired by the legends in the One Thousand and One Nights.
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My grandmother used to read me stories from the One Thousand and One Nights before bedtime.
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The One Thousand and One Nights features famous characters like Aladdin and Sinbad.
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The tales in One Thousand and One Nights are fascinating.
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Many stories in Western literature have been inspired by One Thousand and One Nights.
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Children love the magical tales found in One Thousand and One Nights.
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The movie took inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights, showcasing its famous characters.
Synonyms
1
5.6
A famous set of old stories from the Middle East and South Asia called One Thousand and One Nights
A collection of old Arabic stories called The Thousand and One Nights
A famous book of stories from the Middle East and South Asia
Surface Forms
Morphology
one + thousand + and + one + night
The phrase is literally transparent as a numeric description — a B1 learner who knows 'one', 'thousand' and 'nights' can infer 'one thousand and one nights' as many nights or a sequence of nights. However, its specific meaning as the conventional title for a particular collection of Middle Eastern folktales is culturally conventionalized and not fully predictable from the constituents alone, so prior cultural/lexical knowledge is needed.
Etymology
One Thousand and One Nights comes from an old story about a woman named Scheherazade who told a different tale to a king every night for 1,001 nights so she would not be killed. That strong image of many nights of storytelling is why the title now means the famous book of many Middle Eastern tales, also called 'Arabian Nights'.