fairy tale

Noun

fairy tale (plural fairy tales)

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.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume II, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 122
2. (uncountable) 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.1819 February 27, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 4, column 3
   • Mr. Shimerda kneels in front of the tree in prayer; a praying figure under a magic tree is a common one in fairy tale.1989, Marilyn Berg Callander, Willa Cather and the Fairy Tale, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, page 27
3. (figuratively) 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.1825 May 5, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 2, column 4
4. (figuratively) A delightful and ideal situation of a kind attained by very few.
   • I've been living in a fairy tale since I met Joe.