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View synonyms for never-never land

never-never land

noun

  1. an unreal, imaginary, or ideal state, condition, place, etc.
  2. any remote, isolated, barren, or sparsely settled region.


Never-Never Land

  1. Originally called Neverland, the home of the title character in the story Peter Pan; a place where children never grow up.


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Word History and Origins

Origin of never-never land1

1875–85 never-never land fordef 2; reduplication of never
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Idioms and Phrases

A fantasy land, an imaginary place, as in I don't know what's gotten into Marge—she's way off in never-never land . This expression gained currency when James Barrie used it in Peter Pan (1904) for the place where Peter and the Lost Boys live. However, in the second half of the 1800s Australians already were using it for vast unsettled areas of their continent ( the outback ), and there the term became popular through Mrs. Aeneas Gunn's We of the Never Never (1908). In Australia it still refers to northwest Queensland or northern Australia in general. Elsewhere it simply signifies a fantasy or daydream.
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Example Sentences

It is not a story of a never-never land where fantastic happenings take place daily.

This was an other-world desert, one spawned in the fires of hell—a never-never land of scalding heat and unbelievable cold.

They are the "Never-Never-Land" in which we shall ever be growing, but never grow up.

Go, go away, back to the never-never land, stay there and be safe.

But after all those scuffles on the Strand do seem part of the strange customs of a fusty-dusty never-never land.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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never-nevernever put off until tomorrow