Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Fairytale |
FairytaleNoun1. A story about fairies; told to amuse children. 2. An interesting but highly implausible story; often told as an excuse. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "fairytale" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1898. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A fairy tale is a story, usually told to children, concerning the adventures of mythical characters such as: fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants and others. Also, it often involves princes and princesses. American fairy tales normally have a happy ending, but German and other European tales most often have a bad ending (e.g., a girl plays with matches and burns the house to the ground). Often, fairy tales were disguised morality tales. This is true for the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Collection, and many of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
An extensive collection of European fairy tales were published by Andrew Lang in a series of books: The Red Fairy Book, The Orange Fairy Book, and so forth. These provide some excellent examples of the genre. Some have also classed the Middle Eastern tales from 1001 Arabian Nights as fairy tales.
The fairy tale is a sub-class of the more general folktale.
See also: List of fairy tales, fantasy
External links and references
- Fairy Book collections edited by Andrew Lang, from Project Gutenberg
- Grimm's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg
- Andersen's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Fairy tale."
Synonyms: FairytaleSynonyms: cock-and-bull story (n), fairy story (n), song and dance (n). (additional references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | It's just a fairytale these guys told you to keep you quiet (The Green Mile; writing credit: Frank Darabont) | |
Lyrics | The book of my fairytale (Someone I love, Someone who loves me; performing artist: Dion) And it's no fairytale, take it from me (Even Angels Fall; performing artist: Jessica Riddle) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Fairytale (2001) Urban Fairytale (1996) Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale (1989) | |
Song Titles | A Sorta Fairytale (performing artist: Tori Amos) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Fairytale" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Fairytale" is used about 88 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 88 | 35,154 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "fairytale": fairytale-like. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "fairytale"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | sajesë (concoction, invention), përrallor (fabulous), përrallë (dream, story, tall story), histori i trilluar (figment). (various references) | |
Czech | pohádkový (fabled, fabulous). (various references) | |
German | märchenhaft (fabulous, fantastic, magically), märchen (fable, fairy story, fairy tale, fairy-tale, myth, story, tale, tall story). (various references) | |
Hungarian | tündérmese (fairy tale, fairy-tale). (various references) | |
Norwegian | skrøne (yarn), eventyr (adventure). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | airytalefay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | fantasia (caprice, chimera, crotchet, doss, dream, fable, fancy, fantasia, fantasy, freak, idea, illusion, imagination, invention, legend, maggot, moonshine, phantasm, phantasy, reverie, unreality, vagary, vapor, vapour, whim, whimsical), fábula (apologue, fable, fairy tale, invention, legend, lie, romance, story, tale), mentira (bung, canard, caulker, corker, crack, cracker, cram, crammer, do, fable, falsehood, have-on, humbug, invention, leasing, lie, lying, mendacity, phoney, phony, tall tale, taradiddle, untruth), história (fable, history, narration, narrative, story, tale, yarn), enredo (chicane, circumvention, design, embroilment, fable, involvement, node, overreach, plot, scenario, snarl, story, tangle, web), conto de fadas, conto (fable, history, legend, narrative, romance, short story, story, tale), argumento (fable, plea, subject-matter, topic). (various references) | |
Russian | сказка (fable, fairy tale, tale), сказочный (dreamy, fab, fabulous), выдумка (brain-child, contrivance, fabrication, fib, figment, make up, storytelling), небылица (cock-and-bull story, fable, tall story). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Fairytale" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: fairytaile, hairytale. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-e-f-i-l-r-t-y" | |
-1 letter: fayalite. | |
-2 letters: flytier, frailty, irately, reality, tearily. | |
-3 letters: aerial, aerify, aerily, artily, atrial, elytra, fairly, falter, fealty, featly, ferial, ferity, fetial, filter, flayer, flirty, lariat, latria, lifter, lyrate, ratify, realia, realty, retail, retial, rifely, tailer, trifle. | |
-4 letters: afire, afrit, after, alary, alate, alert, aliya, altar, alter, areal, ariel, artal, artel, atria, early, faery, fairy. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-e-f-i-l-r-t-y" | |
+2 letters: filamentary. | |
+3 letters: deflationary, forestaysail, reflationary. | |
+4 letters: affirmatively, forestaysails, fragmentarily. | |
+5 letters: faintheartedly. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Derivations 10. Anagrams 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
