fairy tale

plural fairy tales · alternative fairy-tale · alternative fairytale · alternative faerie tale

1. A folktale or literary story featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.

   I used to love reading fairy tales when I was a child.

   3 more examples

   The Wife of Bathes Tale is evidently a Fairy-tale. It thus commences: In olde dayes of the king Artour, / Of which that Bretons speken gret honour, / All was this land fulfilled of faerie.

   1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 122

   The Arabian Nights rehears'd in bed! / The Fairy Tales in school-time read.

   1828 April 12, The Hobart Town Courier, page 4, column 4

   All the fairy tales of my childhood were conjured up before my startled imagination, and appeared to be realised in the forms which surrounded me; I saw the whole forest filled with trolls, elves, and sporting dwarfs.

   1881, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen [i.e., Peter Christen Asbjørnsen], “A Summer Night in a Norwegian Forest”, in H. L. Brækstad, transl., Round the Yule Log. Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, →OCLC, page 281

2. uncountableThe literary genre of these stories.

   Mr. Shimerda kneels in front of the tree in prayer; a praying figure under a magic tree is a common one in fairy tale.

   1989, Marilyn Berg Callander, Willa Cather and the Fairy Tale, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, page 27

   1 more example

   Their dresses were rich, and when they came bounding forward, their shapes of silver tissue, with their feathered diadems and faces of animated beauty, they might be imagined into scarcely less than the creations of fairy tale.

   1819 February 27, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 4, column 3

3. figurativelyA fabricated or misleading account meant to deceive, such as an exaggerated excuse.

   He's telling us another fairy tale about how great the software will be.

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   If emigrants will submit to the "fairy tales" of Mr. Thomas, and fall in with his suggestions, they must patiently submit to the disagreeable consequences.

   1825 May 5, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 2, column 4

   Comedy as satire is acceptable, as fun it is a pleasant haven of escape, but the fairy tale of happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; it belongs to the never-never land of childhood, which is protected from the realities that will become terribly known soon enough[.]

   1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 28

4. figurativelyA delightful and ideal situation of a kind attained by very few.

   I've been living in a fairy tale since I met Joe.