shangri-la
/ˌʃæŋɡɹɪˈlɑː/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.85 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A place or land of complete bliss, delight, and peace, especially one seen as an escape from ordinary life; a paradise.
noun
Alternative letter-case form of Shangri-La.
Example Sentences
- "He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don't understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here—along the valley, I gathered—where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain-pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there."
- "The length of the journey gives a measure of the anachronism, which as [César] Vallejo said in one of his stories made the hill town a Shangri-La, forgotten by the rest of Peru."
- "With the fragmented policy-making system which results, America is a Shangri-La for interest groups and lobbyists."
- "He couldn't believe it when he'd discovered there actually was a town called Bedford Falls. It seemed like fans of the film had all collected there to live out their lives in a self-created 1940s American Shangri-la."
- "Tiki Style was forged in the business of bars and restaurants and celebrated in backyard luaus and at theme parks like Disneyland and roadside attractions such as Tiki Gardens. As these ersatz Shangri-las competed to outdo each other with the latest tropical-inspired styles, the popularity of the neighborhood Tiki lounge soared."
- "The human species was lucky, because the only time in the development of bacterial populations when diversity is sacrificed for reproductive expediency is during the exponential burst of growth that follows their discovery of an unprotected ecosystem. The two notable instances in which bacteria find these Shangri Las are in test tubes filled with fresh media and in naive animals that have not seen these particular bacteria in recent immunological memory."
Etymology
From a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton (1900–1954): see the quotation below. A Tibetan origin has been suggested, from ཞང (zhang, “name of a district of Ü-Tsang”) + རི (ri, “mountain”) + ལ (la, “pass”), therefore meaning "Mountain Pass of Zhang District".
Word Breakdown
Usage
- American usage