Cockaigne
English
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, 1567
Etymology
From Old French cocagne, of obscure origin, but the many references to sweet delicacies in the 13th century poem that is the first record of the word suggest it may have come from a Germanic word for a cake, probably the ancestor of the modern German Kuchen.[1][2] See also Proto-Germanic *kōkô.
May also relate to or be influenced by Old Irish cucainn (“food ration, sweet pie”).[3]
Pronunciation
Proper noun
Cockaigne
- (mediaeval folklore) A land of plenty, luxury and idleness.
- Synonyms: land of plenty, lubberland
- Hypernyms: utopia, paradise
- Coordinate term: Arcadia
- 2017, Rutger Bregman, chapter 1, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 3:
- In Cockaigne, the Land of Plenty, people never argued. Instead, they partied, they danced, they drank, and they slept around.
Translations
mythical land
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See also
References
- Michael Quinion (1996–2024) “Cockaigne”, in World Wide Words.
- Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “Cockaigne”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
- Emily K. Yoder, "The Monk’s Paradise in The Land of Cockaygne and the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, " Papers on Language and Literature, 19 (1983), 227—238.
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