What does ivory tower mean in slang?
Definition of ivory tower 1 : an impractical often escapist attitude marked by aloof lack of concern with or interest in practical matters or urgent problems.
What does get off your ivory tower mean?
COMMON If you say that someone is in an ivory tower, you mean that they are protected from the problems of ordinary life and are not aware of how ordinary people live. They’re all out of touch — they live up in a little ivory tower, and they don’t see what’s going on down here.
What is the origin of the idiom an ivory tower?
The image of an ivory tower is used in the Bible in the Song of Solomon to describe a woman’s purity. The modern meaning of the term ivory tower first appears in France in the 1830s as tour d’ivoire to mean an impractical dreamer.
What is another word for ivory tower?
Ivory-tower synonyms In this page you can discover 6 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for ivory-tower, like: impractical, hermitage, intellectual isolation, study, halls of ivy and thrive.
How do you use ivory tower in a sentence?
a state of mind that is discussed as if it were a place.
- I think you live in an ivory tower.
- Departmental barriers and ivory tower attitudes are detrimental to good results.
- Fog had slipped through a crack into the ivory tower.
- They view colleges as an ivory tower.
- The professor lived in an ivory tower.
What is blue collar vs ivory tower?
White-collar workers are known as suit-and-tie workers who work in service industries and often avoid physical labor. The blue-collar stereotype refers to any worker who engages in hard manual labor, such as construction, mining, or maintenance.
Who coined the term ivory tower?
Etymology. Calque of French tour d’ivoire, based on a biblical phrase, coined by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve to compare the poet Alfred de Vigny (more isolated) with Victor Hugo (more socially engaged).
Who coined the phrase ivory tower?
25 Callisthenes, ‘Ivory Towers’, The Times, 17 April 1926, p. 10.
What is the synonym of ivory?
In this page you can discover 33 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for ivory, like: tawny, cream-colored, hippo ivory, creamy, off-white, mahogany, animal tusk, tusk, horn, dead ivory and alabaster.
Where is the ivory tower?
New Mombasa
Ivory Tower was a large skyscraper in New Mombasa….
| Ivory Tower (location) | |
|---|---|
| Destroyed: | October 2552 |
Is it ivy tower or ivory tower?
An ivory tower is a metaphorical place—or an atmosphere—where people are happily cut off from the rest of the world in favor of their own pursuits, usually mental and esoteric ones.
What does it mean to be in an ivory tower?
COMMON If you say that someone is in an ivory tower, you mean that they are protected from the problems of ordinary life and are not aware of how ordinary people live.
What’s the origin of the phrase’Ivory Tower’?
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Ivory tower’? The first mention of ivory towers is in the Bible, Song of Solomon 7:4 ( King James Version ): Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.
Is there an ivory tower above the messy planes of politics?
An ivory tower above and beyond the messy planes of politics is an illusion. — Yangyang Cheng, The Atlantic, 23 Nov. 2021 From the ivory tower to the kitchen table: there’s a disconnect in the way that work is designed.
What is the contemporary figurative meaning of the word ivory?
The contemporary figurative meaning is of a place of unworldly isolation. This may be in allusion to the famous Hawksmoor Towers of Oxford University’s All Souls’ College, which are ivory in colour (or at least, they were when they were built in 1716).