fairy tale

noun

Etymology: Calque of French conte de fées, coined by French writer Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century.

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

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

   “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.”

2. The literary genre of these stories.

   “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.”

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

3. A 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.”

   “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.”

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

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