In 1516 Thomas More published a book called A Fruteful and Pleasant Worke on the Best State of a Publyque Weale, and of the new yle, called Utopia. Now we just call it Utopia- and it described a perfect society in which everyone was happy.
The word Utopia is now part of the English language, it means “a perfect society,” but the actual word (its greek parts) does not mean that. It comes from the Greek roots “ou,” meaning not, and “topos,” meaning place. Hence, outopos (yew-topos) or in English, Utopia.
More named his perfect society Utopia because he acknowledged that such a place does not exist; and perhaps, cannot exist.
However, it is slightly amusing that there is another greek prefix- “Eu,” which means good. Since A Utopian Society is literally perfect, it would be a “good place.” My only question is this- did he decide to use those specific prefixes BECAUSE they sounded so similar?After the word Utopia was coined, someone came up with Dystopia- that’s a bad place. “Dys” is greek for bad or dysfunctional, and a dystopia is simply a totally flawed society.