cloudland poet. and rhet.
(ˈklaʊdlænd)
1. The region of clouds; a ‘landscape’ of clouds.
| 1817 Coleridge Sibyl. Leaves, Fancy in Nubibus, Go From mount to mount through Cloudland. 1866 Kingsley Herew. Prelude 12 Such cloudlands and sunrises as can be seen nowhere else. 1888 Pall Mall G. 15 Sept. 5/2 Breakneck adventures into ‘Cloudland’ [in balloons]. |
2. fig. A region of fancy, myth, or unreality.
| 1847 Lewes Hist. Philos. (1867) II. 535 A yawning gulf of Scepticism, or a baseless cloud-land of Idealism. 1865 Parkman Champlain i. (1875) 170 To leave this cloudland of tradition, and approach the confines of recorded history. |