paracosmos

English

Etymology

From para- +‎ cosmos.

Noun

paracosmos (plural paracosmoses)

1. (rare) The realm of imagination; an imaginary world.
   • 1961, The American Journal of Psychiatry, volume 117, page 96:

     Day dreaming and fantasies which are flights into the paracosmos, are an antithesis of creativity which is the most intense land of action.

   • 1975, Roger Johnson, Editha S. Neumann, Guy T. Trail, editors, Molière and the Commonwealth of Letters: Patrimony and Posterity, University Press of Mississippi, page 421:

     More simply stated, the paracosmos reflects a writer's interest in examining a (generally) rather small number of persons, or types of persons, in a variety of circumstances and relationships: he has marked out a portion of the world as his own and works upon it to make it his.

   • 2011, Claire Golomb, The Creation of Imaginary Worlds: The Role of Art, Magic and Dreams in Child Development, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, →ISBN, page 80:

     Such artists tend to create an imaginary world, a paracosmos where good and evil are starkly represented, where evil powers always challenge the good ones and need to be vanquished time and again.

Synonyms

• paracosm