A.Word.A.Day--Plato's cave

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Jul 5, 2019

This week’s theme
Whose what?

This week’s words
cat's pajamas
Zeno's paradox
Godwin's law
child's play
Plato's cave

Illustration: 4edges/Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Plato’s cave

PRONUNCIATION:

(PLAY-tohz kayv)

MEANING:

noun: An illusory place or experience.

ETYMOLOGY:

After the allegory of Plato’s cave in which people imprisoned there see shadows and assume that to be their reality. Earliest documented use: 1683.

USAGE:

“The truth comes out and worlds fall apart in ‘The Wild Duck’. Henrik Ibsen’s family drama shines a light on a sham marriage. ... It is a Plato’s cave of a play.”
Matt Trueman; Theatre: The Wild Duck; Financial Times (London, UK); Oct 26, 2018.

“Born in captivity in the Chicago zoo, Bruno emerges from his Plato’s cave through the salvation of spoken language.”
Zsuzsi Gartner; Young Writer Goes Ape; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Feb 5, 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. -Jean Cocteau, author and painter (5 Jul 1889-1963)

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