Paradise

How to spell paradise

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce paradise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does paradise mean?

1. nounAn ideal or beautiful place offering perfect happiness or delight.

Paradise in a sentence

• The resort felt like paradise after a long winter at the office.

• For a keen gardener, that overgrown plot was a paradise waiting to be shaped.

Where does paradise come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back through Greek paradeisos, which the Greeks borrowed from Old Persian (Avestan) pairidaeza, a compound of pairi meaning 'around' and daeza meaning 'wall' or 'enclosure'. Literally, then, it described a walled park or pleasure garden of the kind Persian nobles kept. The Greek historian Xenophon used it for the lush hunting parks he saw in Persia, and from there Latin took it as paradisus. When early translators rendered the Hebrew scriptures, paradisus was used for the Garden of Eden, and the word picked up its heavenly sense of a blissful afterlife. English received it through Old French paradis in the 1100s, keeping the single 'd' and the soft '-ise' ending that catches some writers out.

How the word is built

• para- (from Old Persian pairi-: around)
• -dise (from daeza: wall, enclosure); the whole means a walled garden or enclosed park