the.com/utopia
A perfect society, invented by a word that literally means no-place.
means An imagined society so perfectly arranged that it exists only in the imagination — the ideal that keeps slipping out of reach whenever someone tries to build it.
from Coined by Thomas More in 1516 for his book of the same name, stitching together Greek 'ou' (not) and 'topos' (place) — literally 'no-place.' The joke is baked in: More also let it echo 'eu-topos,' 'good place,' so the word quietly winks that the perfect society and the nonexistent one might be the same thing.
- etymology
- Greek for not and place, a pun
- coined by
- Thomas More, in 1516, as satire
- twist
- his book describes slavery and no privacy
- always
- defined by who it excludes