pie in the sky

See also: pie-in-the-sky

English

WOTD – 26 September 2017

Etymology

The phrase is originally from the song “The Preacher and the Slave” (1911) by Swedish-American labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill (1879–1915), which he wrote as a parody of the Salvation Army hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By” (published 1868). The song criticizes the Salvation Army for focusing on people’s salvation rather than on their material needs:^[1]

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpaɪ ɪn ðə ˈskaɪ/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpaɪ ɪn ðə ˈskaɪ/, /ˈpaɪ ən ðə ˈskaɪ/
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Rhymes: -aɪ

Noun

pie in the sky (uncountable)

(idiomatic) A fanciful notion; an unrealistic or ludicrous concept; the illusory promise of a desired outcome that is unlikely to happen.
- 1950, Anya Seton [pseudonym; Anya Seton Chase], Foxfire, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin; republished Boston, Mass.: Mariner Books, 2015, →ISBN, page 124:
  Don't you think I have anything better to do than go scrambling around hundreds of square miles of the toughest wilderness in the state looking for pie in the sky?
- 1970, John Lennon, “I Found Out”, in John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band:
  Old Hare Krishna got nothing on you / Just keep you crazy with nothing to do / Keep you occupied with pie in the sky
- 1994, Alfred W. Crosby[, Jr.], “Demography, Maize, Land, and the American Character”, in Germs, Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History (Sources and Studies in World History), Armonk, N.Y., London: M. E. Sharpe, →ISBN, page 167:
  [M]ost Americans are chronically materialistic and optimistic, more interested in short-range than long-range prospects, and have been for many generations. Pie on the table today or, at the latest, tomorrow—apple pie, mince pie, pecan pie, apricot pie, coconut cream pie, lemon meringue pie, peach cobbler pie, blueberry, blackberry, huckleberry, and pizza pie—that is what they want, not "pie in the sky," whether the source of that promise be Christianity or Marxism.
- 2015, Sophie Hudson, “The Brat Pack Movies Didn’t Really Cover this Part”, in Home is Where My People Are: The Roads that Lead Us to Where We Belong, Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, →ISBN, page 117:
  […] I grew in the House Full of Practical People, so any grand, dream-chasing pursuit has always struck me as sort of pie in the sky.
- 2020 December 2, Christian Wolmar, “Wales offers us a glimpse of an integrated transport policy”, in Rail, page 57:
  Ah, I can hear the objectors say, all this is pie in the sky and too expensive. In fact, according to Lord Burns, "this is all perfectly feasible at a reasonable cost".

Synonyms

Derived terms

pie-in-the-sky (adjective)

Translations

fanciful notion

Danish: luftkastel n, luftsteg og vindfrikadeller
Dutch: luchtkasteel (nl)
Esperanto: aerkastelo, ĥimero
Finnish: pilvilinna (fi)
Icelandic: loftkastali (is) m
Korean: 그림의 떡 (geurim-ui tteok)
Maori: waitara
Polish: zamki na lodzie nvir pl, marzenie ściętej głowy (pl) n
Russian: журавль в небе m (žuravlʹ v nebe) (idiomatic), воздушный замок (ru) m (vozdušnyj zamok)

Adjective

pie in the sky (comparative more pie in the sky, superlative most pie in the sky)

Alternative form of pie-in-the-sky.
- 1997 July 6, Adam Clymer, “G.O.P. Urged to Back Arts Endowment”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2015-05-27:
  After listening to descriptions of local grants between $500 and $50,000 (Montana got a total of $593,691 this year), he said the comparatively small contribution from the endowment ''could be replaced by a national organization that is privately run.'' His local critics questioned how that would work, and Jane Alexander, chairwoman of the endowment, scoffed at the idea. ''I think it's very pie in the sky,'' she said in a telephone interview.
- 2016 March 28, David Lauter, “Poll: As California primary nears, even Sanders supporters are uniting behind Clinton and against a common enemy: Trump”, in Los Angeles Times‎^[3], Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2016-03-28:
  That’s certainly the case for Gretta Whalen, a 32-year-old freelance writer and communications consultant from Los Angeles, who leans toward Sanders. Clinton, she said, “has been around for so long, and we know so much about her, and not all of it is positive.” Sanders, by contrast, seems attractive, and his ideas feel new, even if “some of them are very pie in the sky and would be very difficult to get the rest of the country on board with.”
- 2024 March 22, Mabel Banfield-Nwachi, “‘This person saved her’: the cancer patients in need of a stem cell donor match”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎^[4], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2024-03-22:
  Pete McCleave first heard about stem cells during his sciences degree in the 1990s. “I knew about them, I just didn’t know what they could be used for,” he says. “It all sounded very pie in the sky.”

References

^ Brendan Koerner (2003 January 15) “Where does the phrase ‘pie in the sky’ come from?”, in Slate‎^[1], archived from the original on 2 December 2016; Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “pie in the sky”, in Online Etymology Dictionary, retrieved 21 July 2017.