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| HOUSE OF CARDS (English) | ||||
| Any insecure or unsubstantial
structure, system, or scheme subject to imminent collapse;
also castle of cards.
The illusion is to the card-castles or houses children often build, only to blow them down in one breath a few moments later. |
Painted battlements . . . of prelatry, which want but one puff of the King's to blow them down like a past-board house built of court-cards. (John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England, 1641) | |||
| CASTILLO DE BARAJA (Spanish) | ||||
| In Spanish, castillo de baraja, "castle of cards." Fanciful notion; pipe dream; the opposite of all that is practical, reasonable, or grounded in common sense. | The phrase appeared in English
in The Romance of the Rose (approx. 1400):
Thou shalt make castles then in Spain,
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| CHATEAU EN ESPAGNE (French) | ||||
| Chateau en Espagne, the
French equivalent, dates from the 13th century.
The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the reference to Spain to the fact that it represents a "foreign country where one had no standing-ground." Spain has been superseded by the now current air or sky. |
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| CASTLES IN THE AIR (English) | ||||
| Visionary projects; daydreams
or fantasies; impractical, romantic, or whimsical
schemes; half-baked ideas without solid foundation.
This phrase, common since 1575, is equivalent to castles in the sky. |
Things are thought, which never
yet were wrought,
And castles built above in lofty skies. (George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas, 1575) |
| From Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary, by Laurence Urdang & Nancy LaRoche (Gale Research Co., 1980). |
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| © 1998 E.V.A. Co.
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