Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun pharmacy A drug providing escape from the problems of reality, or giving dreams of utopia.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Portmanteau of utopia and opiate. The noun usage was coined by Richard H. Blum of Stanford University in 1964.

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Examples

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  • Ideals can be perverted, idealists can go too far. Idealism is the utopiate of the apparatchik.

    --John Rodden, 2002, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern German Education, 1945-1995

    February 7, 2008

  • To me, "utopiate" refers to a spiritual, inner utopia, an achievable one, as opposed to the external, idealistic political utopias usually discussed. But I guess I shouldn't surprise me that I'm not the first person to come up with that particular portmanteau.

    January 17, 2009

  • 1. a perverted ideal, or an ideal taken too far.

    2. an internal, spiritual utopia which is perceived as achievable, as opposed to external, idealized, impossible political utopiae.

    January 17, 2009

  • any source that provides an intense, yet short-lived, sensation of perfect happiness followed by a need to experience it again.

    September 23, 2009