paradise
UK[ˈpærədaɪs]US[ˈpærədaɪs]
n
A place or state of perfect happiness, beauty, and peace, often imagined as a heavenly garden.
n
A place or situation that is extremely pleasant and where people are very happy.
n
(in some religions) The abode of God and the blessed dead; heaven.
Etymology
The word 'paradise' has a remarkable journey from a literal, physical concept to a spiritual and abstract ideal. It entered English via Old French 'paradis', from Latin 'paradisus', and ultimately from Greek 'paradeisos'. The Greeks borrowed the term from an Old Iranian compound 'pairi-daēza-', meaning 'walled enclosure' or 'park', from 'pairi-' (around) and 'diz-' (to form, to build a wall). This term described the walled royal parks and pleasure gardens of the ancient Persian Achaemenid Empire. Through its use in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible to refer to the Garden of Eden, the word's meaning was profoundly transformed from a luxurious earthly garden to the ultimate divine abode and a symbol of perfect bliss, a semantic shift that was fully inherited by English.
Analysis
The word 'paradise' is a simplex loanword. Its core form is borrowed directly from Old French and Latin, which in turn borrowed it from an ancient Iranian source. It is not productively formed from separable English morphemes.
Examples
The island was a tropical paradise with white sandy beaches and crystal-clear water.
For book lovers, the quiet library was a paradise.
In the parable, the beggar was carried by angels to paradise.