Cockaigne

English

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, 1567

Alternative forms

• Cocagne, Cocaigne, Cockayne

Etymology

From Old French cocagne, of obscure origin, but the many references to sweet delicacies in the 13th century poem that is the first record of the word suggest it may have come from a Germanic word for a cake, probably the ancestor of the modern German Kuchen. See also Proto-Germanic *kōkô.

May also relate to or be influenced by Old Irish cucainn (“food ration, sweet pie”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɒˈkeɪn/, /kəˈkeɪn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Homophone: cocaine (one pronunciation)

Proper noun

Cockaigne

1. (mediaeval folklore) A land of plenty, luxury and idleness.

   Synonyms: land of plenty, lubberland

   Hypernyms: utopia, paradise

   Coordinate term: Arcadia

   • 2017, Rutger Bregman, chapter 1, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 3:

     In Cockaigne, the Land of Plenty, people never argued. Instead, they partied, they danced, they drank, and they slept around.

Translations

mythical land

• Catalan: país de Cucanya m, Xauxa f
• Danish: please add this translation if you can, slaraffenland
• Dutch: Luilekkerland (nl) n
• Finnish: Laiskurila
• French: cocagne (fr) f, pays de cocagne (fr) m
• German: Schlaraffenland (de) n
• Italian: cuccagna (it) f, paese della cuccagna m
• Marathi: कॉकेन (kŏken)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: slaraffenland

• Polish: Kukania f, Kraj Kròla Goždzika f
• Portuguese: Cucanha f
• Russian: Кока́нь m (Kokánʹ), Шлараффенла́нд m (Šlaraffenlánd)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: зѐмља Дембелија f

  Roman: zèmlja Dembelija f

• Spanish: país de Cucaña m
• Swedish: schlaraffenland (sv) n

See also

• land of milk and honey
• hedonism
• lotus land

Further reading

• Cockaigne on Wikipedia.Wikipedia