Wonderland

How to spell wonderland

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce wonderland

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wonderland mean?

1. nounAn imaginary or real place full of marvellous, enchanting, or delightful things.

Wonderland in a sentence

• The festival turned the old town square into a glittering wonderland of lights.

• After the snowfall, the whole valley looked like a winter wonderland.

Where does wonderland come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wonderland is a transparent English compound built from two very old native words. The first element, wonder, descends from the Old English wundor, meaning a marvellous thing or a cause of astonishment, a word with cousins across the Germanic languages such as the German Wunder. The second element, land, comes from Old English land, meaning ground, country, or region, and is shared widely across Germanic tongues. The compound itself is relatively modern, recorded from around the early nineteenth century to describe an imaginary or enchanting place full of marvels. Its fame was sealed in 1865 when Lewis Carroll published his story of a girl named Alice falling into just such a realm, and the word has carried that magical, dreamlike flavour ever since. Because both halves are plain everyday words, the spelling is straightforward once you remember it is simply wonder joined directly to land.

How the word is built

• wonder (marvel, astonishment)
• land (region, place)