Xanadu
/ˈzænəduː/noun
Xanadu is a noun meaning “A place full of beauty, happiness and wonder” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled X-A-N-A-D-U and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 3 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of Xanadu is Xanadus.
What does Xanadu mean?
noun
- 1
A place full of beauty, happiness and wonder.
- 2
An opulent building or resort that provides entertainment or luxurious living.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce Xanadu?
- /ˈzænəduː/
Xanadu has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-Xanadu.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of Xanadu
- Xanadus plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is Xanadu?
Xanadu appears about once in every 3 million words in written English, the 52,337th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does Xanadu come from?
From Mandarin 上都 (Shàngdū, “Upper Capital”). The first Romanized form comes from Marco Polo's writings in Italian as Shan-Du. In 1617, Purchas his Pilgrimage […] by Samuel Purchas was published in London, containing the phrase “In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace” on page 472. This was the inspiration for Coleridge's poem which uses the spelling Xanadu.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).