Dictionary

pearly gates en · NOUN

Etymology

After the description in Revelation 21:21.

Meanings

1. (plural, plural-only) The entrance way to Heaven.
   • When I'm at the pearly gates / This'll be on my videotape, my videotape 2007, “Videotape”, in In Rainbows, performed by Radiohead:
   • I'd toss for pennies on the front steps of the New Jerusalem or set up a faro layout just outside the Pearly Gates. 1910, Jack London, chapter 20, in Burning Daylight:
   • The narrowness of the imagination of the old masters is generally depicted in their canvases. Heaven to them was a serious business of pearly gates, harps, halos, and aërial flights on ambient pale clouds. 1908, Harold McGraff, chapter 27, in The Lure of the Mask:
   • By the time they got a doctor down / I was already dead / And I'll never understand why the man / Standing in the Pearly Gates said… 1971, John Prine, “Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore”, in John Prine:
   • This immense wealth; this gilded splendor; this profusion of luxury; this exemption from toil; this life of ease; this sea of plenty; aye, what of it all? Are the pearly gates of happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors? 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 7, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC:
   • When shall these eyes thy heaven-built walls / And pearly gates behold? 1795, Joseph Bromehead, Jerusalem, My Happy Home:
2. (broadly, plural, plural-only) Heaven itself.

Forms