Word.ws English Dictionary

pearly gates

pearly gates noun: the entrance way to Heaven.

Noun (1)

pearly gates pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The entrance way to Heaven.
    • When shall these eyes thy heaven-built walls / And pearly gates behold?1795, Joseph Bromehead, Jerusalem, My Happy Home
    • This immense wealth; this gilded splendor; this profusion of luxury; this exemption from toil; this life of ease; this sea of plenty; aye, what of it all? Are the pearly gates of happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors?1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 7, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC
  2. (broadly, plural, plural-only) Heaven itself.

Noun (2) capitalized: Pearly Gates

Pearly Gates pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Alternative letter-case form of pearly gates.

Examples of pearly gates in a sentence

  • Heaven to them was a serious business of pearly gates, harps, halos, and aërial flights on ambient pale clouds.1908, Harold McGraff, chapter 27, in The Lure of the Mask:
  • I'd toss for pennies on the front steps of the New Jerusalem or set up a faro layout just outside the Pearly Gates.1910, Jack London, chapter 20, in Burning Daylight:
  • By the time they got a doctor down / I was already dead / And I'll never understand why the man / Standing in the Pearly Gates said…1971, John Prine, “Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore”, in John Prine:
  • When I'm at the pearly gates / This'll be on my videotape, my videotape2007, “Videotape”, in In Rainbows, performed by Radiohead:

Forms of pearly gates

alternative formPearly Gates

Origin of pearly gates

After the description in Revelation 21:21.

Questions about pearly gates

What does pearly gates mean?
Pearly gates means the entrance way to Heaven.
How do you use pearly gates in a sentence?
Heaven to them was a serious business of pearly gates, harps, halos, and aërial flights on ambient pale clouds.
What part of speech is pearly gates?
Pearly gates is a noun.

Words near pearly gates in the dictionary

  1. pearly coronal papules
  2. pearly disease
  3. pearly everlasting
  4. pearly families
  5. pearly family
  6. pearly gates
  7. pearly king
  8. pearly kings
  9. pearly nautili
  10. pearly nautilus
  11. pearly nautiluses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pearly gates (page history and authors); Pearly Gates (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pearly gates.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pearly_gates. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.