# fairy tale

Pronunciation: say "FAIR-ee-tayl" US /ˈfɛɹi ˌteɪl/, UK /ˈfɛəɹi ˌteɪl/

## Noun

1. A traditional folktale or a literary story that features fairies or similar fantasy characters.
   - Simple: A story with fairies or other magical characters, either passed down by people or written by an author.
   - _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._
3. A story someone tells as though it were true, but that is not believable.
   - Simple: A story someone says is true, but that is too hard to believe.
   - _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._
4. A delightful, ideal situation of the kind that very few people ever get to experience.
   - Simple: A happy, perfect situation that very few people ever get.
   - _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._
5. The literary genre made up of folktales and authored stories featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.
   - Simple: The type of writing made up of stories about fairies and other magical 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._

## Adjective · fairy-tale

2. Having the character of a fairy tale, or seeming to come straight out of one.
   - Simple: Very much like a fairy tale, as if it came 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._

## Noun · fairy-tale

6. A dated spelling of fairy tale, with a hyphen joining the two words.
   - Simple: An old-fashioned way of writing fairy tale, with a hyphen between the words.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/fairy-tale (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).