UTOPIA

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Utopia mean? 

• UTOPIA (noun)
  The noun UTOPIA has 4 senses:

1. a book written by Sir Thomas More (1516) describing the perfect society on an imaginary island

2. ideally perfect state; especially in its social and political and moral aspects

3. a work of fiction describing a utopia

4. an imaginary place considered to be perfect or ideal

  Familiarity information: UTOPIA used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UTOPIA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A book written by Sir Thomas More (1516) describing the perfect society on an imaginary island

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Instance hypernyms:

book (a written work or composition that has been published (printed on pages bound together))

Derivation:

Utopian (of or pertaining to or resembling a utopia)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ideally perfect state; especially in its social and political and moral aspects

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("utopia" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Antonym:

dystopia (state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad as from deprivation or oppression or terror)

Derivation:

utopian (characterized by or aspiring to impracticable perfection)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A work of fiction describing a utopia

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("utopia" is a kind of...):

fiction (a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact)

Sense 4

Meaning:

An imaginary place considered to be perfect or ideal

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

Sion; Utopia; Zion

Hypernyms ("Utopia" is a kind of...):

fictitious place; imaginary place; mythical place (a place that exists only in imagination; a place said to exist in fictional or religious writings)

 Context examples 

Scientists examined part of Mars' Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes, with the orbiter's ground-penetrating Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument.

(Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior, NASA)

If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The Utopia deposit is shielded from the atmosphere by a soil covering estimated to be about 3 to 33 feet (1 to 10 meters) thick.

(Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior, NASA)