American Heritage Dictionary Entry: paradise HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key. Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window. guide to the dictionary THE USAGE PANEL The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. The Panelists NEED HELP SOLVING A CROSSWORD PUZZLE? Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. -- AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. OPEN DICTIONARY PROJECT Share your ideas for new words and new meanings of old words! Start Sharing Now! -- See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series! Find out more! INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES? Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com par·a·dise (părə-dīs′, -dīz′) Share: Tweet n. 1. often Paradise The Garden of Eden. 2. a. In various religious traditions, the Edenic or heavenly abode of righteous souls after death. b. According to some forms of Christian belief, an intermediate resting place for righteous souls awaiting the Resurrection. 3. a. A place of great beauty or happiness: saw the park as a paradise within a noisy city. b. A state of delight or happiness: The newlyweds have been in paradise for months. [Middle English paradis, from Old French, from Late Latin paradīsus, from Greek paradeisos, garden, enclosed park, paradise, from Avestan pairidaēza-, enclosure, park : pairi-, around; see per1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots + daēza-, wall; see dheigh- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] par′a·di·sia·cal (-dĭ-sīə-kəl, -zī-), par′a·di·siac (-ăk), par′a·di·sai·cal (-dĭ-sāĭ-kəl, -zā-), par′a·di·saic (-ĭk), par′a·disal (-dīsəl, -zəl) adj. par′a·di·sia·cal·ly, par′a·di·sai·cal·ly, par′a·disal·ly adv. Word History: From an etymological perspective at least, paradise is located in ancient Iran—for it is there that the word paradise ultimately originates. The old Iranian language Avestan had a noun pairidaēza-, "a wall enclosing a garden or orchard," which is composed of pairi-, "around," and daēza- "wall." The adverb and preposition pairi is related to the equivalent Greek form peri, as in perimeter. Daēza- comes from the Indo-European root *dheigh-, "to mold, form, shape." Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens, and even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden. Xenophon, a Greek mercenary soldier who spent some time in the Persian army and later wrote histories, recorded the pairidaēza- surrounding the orchard as paradeisos, using it not to refer to the wall itself but to the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build and hunt in. This Greek word was used in the Septuagint translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden, and then Latin translations of the Bible used the Greek word in its Latinized form, paradisus. The Latin word was then borrowed into Old English and used to designate the Garden of Eden. In Middle English, the form of the word was influenced by its Old French equivalent, paradis, and it is from such Middle English forms as paradis that our Modern English word descends. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices: Indo-European Roots Semitic Roots The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 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