ivory tower
11
8.1
- noun
- /ˈaɪvəri ˈtaʊər/
:
torre de marfil
- The professor spent years in his ivory tower, developing theories that seemed disconnected from real-world problems.
- live in an ivory tower
This is my very snobby ivory tower opinion.
- This is my very snobby ivory tower opinion.
- He's not one of these stuffy sorts who is in the, you know, the ivory tower, as we say.
- I value the trenches and people value the ivory towers and that is why nobody scares me.
- I'm singling out those two items because they take us to Mary's activities beyond the ivory tower.
- You see, I mean the researchers in an ivory tower, unless somebody else picks up on them and carries the messages.
- But when it comes to public health, we have a bunch of ivory tower academics who want data that, you know, they want to see perfection.
- And why I say that, Megan, is because those words like letinks or philipinks or, you know, however folks want to pronounce it, they're inventions of the ivory tower.
- All the people we compete with are ivory tower holding company accountants and bankers.
- So I'm going to close here with a suggestion that has to do with the ivory tower.
Examples
-
Classroom teachers felt that the project had broken down the "ivory tower syndrome" between university professors and practitioners.
Academic text (2001) -
Lively programming has made the college more of a community member and less of an ivory tower.
Academic text (2006) -
And that used to be primarily just a thought exercise, sort of an academic ivory tower thought exercise.
-
Perhaps this is why many practitioners are cautious and cool toward "ivory tower" theory.
Academic text (1990) -
How one Harvard history professor escaped the ivory tower and learned to live and tell the tale.
-
And you have, as you mentioned, not sequestered yourself in this ivory tower of literature as your sole source of input.
-
The stereotypical view of the faculty member toiling away in an ivory tower is actually rather the opposite of reality.
Academic text (2013) -
Can we justify living in an ivory tower, ignorant of any obligation to educate the society that supports us?
Academic text (1995) -
The notion of the lonely scholar pursuing an education in an ivory tower is as outmoded as it is false.
Academic text (1997) -
Maybe you've been up in your ivory tower of academia for so long you've forgotten that some people's lives are hard.
Synonyms
2
9.4
Being separate from other places and having a narrow view of the world
A way of thinking that keeps a country apart and closed to outside ideas
Antonyms
How Detached
11
8.1
1
3.0
18
3.7
352
1.7
253
3.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a metaphor: 'ivory' and 'tower' individually evoke rarity/preciousness and height/separation, so a learner might infer a sense of remoteness or elitism, but the specific sense of being divorced from practical or everyday concerns (especially in academia) is not directly predictable from the literal parts. Although many languages use a similar idiom (e.g. French 'tour d'ivoire', Spanish 'torre de marfil'), the precise social/academic meaning remains partly idiomatic and typically requires prior exposure.
Etymology
Ivory tower may come from the image of a tall, white tower made of ivory where scholars were high above the town and did not see normal life. That's why ivory tower means 'a place or way of thinking separated from everyday life'.