Dictionary

skyland en · NOUN

Etymology

From sky + land.

Meanings

1. (poetic) The sky.
   • In the warmest summer weather a temperature of 88 degrees may be reached, but not for long at a time, since speedily a moderating breeze with comforting designs steals down from the skylands. 1951, Herbert Brandt, Arizona and Its Bird Life: A Naturalist’s Adventures with the Nesting Birds on the Deserts, Grasslands, Foothills, and Mountains of Southeastern Arizona, Cleveland, Ohio: The Bird Research Foundation, page 333:
   • The sun with its white-blue-sky coverlet sunk deep down the far horizon giving way to a skyland that wore a grey outfit. 2001, Victor Bruce, A Vase of Shrubs, Yaba, Lagos: Oracle Books Limited, →ISBN, page 77:
   • And the winds from the skylands brought / Over the illimitudes, a thought:— / A thought I could not understand, / That earth lay shadowed ’neath God’s hand. 1913, John Gould Fletcher, The Book of Nature, 1910-1912, London: Constable and Company Ltd, page 44:
   • Look to the woodlands where the doves / Crowd with their murmurs green alcoves; / Look to the skylands where the clouds / Mantle the East with their glory-shrouds. 1857, J[ames] J[ohn] G[arth] W[ilkinson], “Turner: Painter. His State.”, in Improvisations from the Spirit, London: W. White, […]; Manchester: Dunnill and Palmer, →OCLC, page 146:
2. A mythical abode of gods or spirits in the sky; a heaven.
   • “How, how, sister,” greeted Keyahanhi, recalled from the skylands by her welcome coming. 1907, Frank Welles Calkins, The Wooing of Tokala: An Intimate Tale of the Wild Life of the American Indian Drawn from Camp and Trail, New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.; Toronto, Ont.: Fleming H. Revell Company, page 82:
   • With this supernatural vision went the ability to travel to the skyland, the undersea home of the seals, and the underground land of the dead, where they could communicate with and pacify the forces of nature. 1994, Ann Fienup-Riordan, Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yup’ik Eskimo Oral Tradition, Norman, Okla.; London: University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN, page 305:
   • Manitou from the skylands once did score / Where the people today have built their homes. 1955, K[arl] Alex Carlsson, Short Tales and American Poems, Bloom Printing Company, page 33:
   • That is how ancestors came from the skylands to the left. 2002, Ayi Kwei Armah, KMT: In the House of Life: An Epistemic Novel, PER ANKH, →ISBN, page 223:
3. A land above the sky, such as a floating city or another planet.
   • The military intelligence confidently surmises that their ethnic origin is either from the skylands in the clouds of Jupiter or from Uranus. 2022, Yoda Oraiah, Cosmism: A New Hope for Humanity, FriesenPress, →ISBN, page 198:
   • She then went to Miss Green’s house who, when she heard the sound of the six pipe flute, expected to see her husband return from the skyland. She opened the door. Instead, it was the tiger demon who touched the hem of her skirt causing her to fall down in a dead faint. 1967, Collected Papers in Highway Salvage Archaeology, 1972-74, Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, →ISBN, page 55:
   • First he has to find the place, and as the sleeve of night brings darkness to his city of Viron, light to the skylands above, he sets out on his quest. 2016, Michael Andre-Driussi, Gene Wolfe: 14 Articles on His Fiction, Sirius Fiction, →ISBN, page 128:
   • But that day in the skylands of Skod, the day of deliverance, I never set out to do anything like what I’m given credit for. 2022 August, Rick Remender, Seven to Eternity, deluxe edition, Image Comics, Inc.:
   • Tearing his eyes from the skylands, he called, “You warned me that Blood was going to catch me, back there in the city while you were renting these donkeys for us. What do you think he’ll do to me if he does?” 1993, Gene Wolfe, Nightside the Long Sun (The Book of the Long Sun), Tor Books, →ISBN:
   • They passed a number of islands as well as a few low lying skylands, all heavy with vegetation and life. 2021, L.T. Junzon, Descendants of the Lost: Tales of the Seeker, MJ Publishing, →ISBN:

Forms