never-never land
2
8.8
- noun
- /ˈnɛvərˈnɛvər lænd/
- Literature
:
país de nunca jamás
- But Adrienne has lapsed into never-never land.
- off to never-never land
- live in never-never land
Examples
-
I'm going to Never Never Land with my chosen family, man.
-
Yes, sir, I'm washed up with never-never land.
-
And you ride right along to never, never land.
Blog text (8) -
You gonna fly off to Never-Never Land?
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You know, it must be nice living in never-never land.
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You keep calling it never-never land.
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Somewhere, somehow, I lost the moment into never-never land.
Blog text (27) -
A never-never land in which possibility is more than a sometime thing and help is where you find it.
Fiction book (1995) -
Welcome to never-never land.
-
In her daydreams, she often imagines a never-never land filled with adventure and excitement.
Synonyms
21
4.4
An imagined place in your mind with magic and strange creatures
15
7.9
An imagined perfect place where people live together happily
13
5.1
A pleasant imaginary place you visit in sleep or imagination
5
7.7
A scene that feels like being in a dream
3
6.1
An imaginary place where everything is perfect and magical
2
6.6
An imagined perfect place that exists only in dreams
1
6.3
A place in your mind where you imagine things
1
8.0
An imaginary land of dreams in stories and books
1
8.6
An imaginary place where a person avoids real life and adult duties
1
6.9
A place that exists only in stories or imagination
1
8.9
A mysterious state between reality and imagination
An imagined place or state not connected to real life
A place that exists only in the mind or in stories
A place that exists only in your mind, often in stories
Antonyms
How Real
Surface Forms
Morphology
never-never + land
The phrase combines a negator ('never', repeated as a childish/reduplicative form) with 'land', so learners who know the parts can partly infer 'a place of never/never happening' and thus get a sense of unreality or unattainability. However, 'never-never' is not a standard compositional lexeme and the full idiomatic sense (a fantasy or unattainable place, tied to the literary name Neverland) depends on cultural/literary knowledge, so the meaning is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Never-never land may come from children's stories like Peter Pan's Neverland, a place where children never grow up and live in a make-believe land. So, the phrase means a dreamy or 'imaginary' place and ideas that are not real.