Utopia

American  

[yoo-toh-pee-uh] / juˈtoʊ pi ə /

noun

1. an imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516) as enjoying perfection in law, politics, etc.

2. (usually lowercase) an ideal place or state.

3. (usually lowercase) any visionary system of political or social perfection.

---

Utopia British  

/ juːˈtəʊpɪə /

noun

1. (sometimes not capital) any real or imaginary society, place, state, etc, considered to be perfect or ideal

---

Utopia Cultural  

1. (1516) A book by Sir Thomas More that describes an imaginary ideal society free of poverty and suffering. The expression utopia is coined from Greek words and means “no place.”

---

Usage

What is Utopia? Utopia is an ideal place or state, usually one that is unrealistic or unattainable. For example, if you love playing basketball and dislike studying, your utopia might be a place where everyone is supposed to play basketball all day and there is no school. Utopia, capitalized, is the name for a fictional island from Sir Thomas More’s story Utopia, which is said to be a perfect society. The book describes the society in detail, including laws, customs, and religion. Utopia is also any imagined perfect society or political system. It is often used when discussing politics and law to describe an unreachable goal or something that is overly visionary. Example: We don’t live in some utopia where everyone has access to clean water.

Discover More

By extension, a “utopia” is any ideal state.

Etymology

Origin of Utopia

< New Latin (1516) < Greek ou not + tóp ( os ) a place + -ia -y ³

Compare meaning

How does utopia compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• Utopia vs. dystopia

Explanation

Utopia is a perfect paradise that doesn’t exist, but which we all dream of anyway. In the dead of winter, we might imagine a utopia full of palm trees, warm breezes, and sun-soaked beaches. Utopia didn't evolve from Latin or another old foreign language. Author Thomas More actually created the noun in one of his books to describe an imaginary island where all systems—political, social, and legal—are perfect and operate harmoniously. The definition of utopia was later broadened to imply any perfect place. The opposite of utopia is dystopia, coined in 1868 by J.S. Mill to describe an “imaginary bad place.”

Example Sentences

Mariah Calagione, like other Boston Beer employees, was asked this year to volunteer on the Utopias bottling line in Delaware, where each container was filled by hand.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025

Many of these evanescent would-be Utopias, independent communes and mayfly principalities hardly did more than design a flag and choose a national anthem.

From Washington Post • Jun. 22, 2021

Utopias are like blueprints and novels are like soap operas.

From Slate • Feb. 6, 2020

Utopias are romantic and seductive; but it might make more sense to try and gently alter our day to day reality, one day at a time.

From Salon • Nov. 21, 2018

"Mr. Wells's 'Utopia' is far the most interesting, imaginative, and possible of all the Utopias written since the inventions and discoveries of science began to color our conceptions of the future."

From Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)

Related Words

• bliss
• paradise