castles in Spain
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Calque of French châteaux en Espagne, recorded in the Roman de la Rose in the 13th century and translated into English around 1365.
Noun
[edit]castles in Spain (uncountable)
- A variant of castles in the air.
- 1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, chapter XXX, in Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, published August 1909 (11th printing), →OCLC:
- Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland—adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life.
- 1977, “Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)”, in I Robot, performed by The Alan Parsons Project:
- The show must go on / And time slipped away / Before you could build any castles in Spain / The chance had gone by