fairy tale

Pluralfairy tales, fairy-tales

1. 1
   magic storynouncountable

   A traditional folktale or a literary story that features fairies or similar fantasy characters.

   Her grandmother read her a fairy tale every night, always one with a witch, a curse, or a talking wolf.

   The folklorist spent a summer recording fairy tales that villagers had passed down for generations.

   Similarfolktale, tale

2. 2
   magicaladjective · fairy-tale

   Having the character of a fairy tale, or seeming to come straight out of one.

   The couple exchanged vows in a fairy-tale castle above a misty lake.

   The rookie capped his fairy-tale season with a championship ring.

   Similarstorybook, magical, enchanted, idyllic

   Note

   The hyphen marks the adjective, which does its work in front of a noun: a fairy-tale romance, a fairy-tale castle, a fairy-tale season. It does not take degrees, so very fairy-tale and more fairy-tale are best avoided. To grade the effect, switch to the noun: a wedding that was almost like a fairy tale, a season even more like a fairy tale than the last.

3. 3
   lienouncountable

   A story someone tells as though it were true, but that is not believable.

   Nobody on the jury bought the defendant's fairy tale about a stranger borrowing his car that night.

   The minister dismissed the opposition's budget figures as a fairy tale that no economist would take seriously.

   Similarlie, fabrication, fantasy, fiction, invention

   Note

   Often the story is too good to be true, like a promise of how great the software will be; in 1825 The Sydney Gazette warned emigrants against the "fairy tales" of a Mr. Thomas. It is the dream come true seen by a skeptic, as when Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, says the fairy tale of happiness ever after "cannot be taken seriously."

4. 4
   ideal lifenouncountable

   A delightful, ideal situation of the kind that very few people ever get to experience.

   Their first year of marriage was a fairy tale: a cottage by the sea and hardly a cross word.

   Since the record deal, the young singer says she has been living in a fairy tale.

   Similardream, idyll, paradise

   Oppositenightmare

5. 5
   literary genrenoununcountable

   The literary genre made up of folktales and authored stories featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.

   Talking animals and enchanted forests recur throughout fairy tale, from village folklore to modern retellings.

   She wrote her dissertation on the place of the witch in European fairy tale.

   Note

   Writers treat the genre the way they treat poetry or folklore, with no article and no plural: the creations of fairy tale. That bare singular is not a slip. Fairy tales counts the stories themselves one by one, while fairy tale on its own names the whole tradition at once. Writing on Willa Cather in 1989, Marilyn Berg Callander calls a praying figure under a magic tree "a common one in fairy tale."

6. 6
   old spellingnoun · fairy-tale

   A dated spelling of fairy tale, with a hyphen joining the two words.

   Note

   Older printing is where the hyphenated noun turns up. Modern writing keeps the noun open, a fairy tale, and saves the hyphen for the adjective in front of another noun. Met in an older book, a fairy-tale is simply the familiar noun in period dress. In new prose it looks old-fashioned, so keep it for writing where that period flavor is the point.

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