pearly gates
See also: Pearly Gates
English
Alternative forms
- Pearly Gates
Etymology
After the description in Revelation 21:21.[1]
Noun
pearly gates pl (plural only)
- (biblical) The entrance way to Heaven.
- 1795, Joseph Bromehead, Jerusalem, My Happy Home:
- When shall these eyes thy heaven-built walls / And pearly gates behold?
- 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 7, in My Bondage and My Freedom, New York: Miller, Orton and Mulligan:
- 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?
- 1908, Harold McGraff, chapter 27, in The Lure of the Mask:
- 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.
- 1910, Jack London, chapter 20, in Burning Daylight:
- I'd toss for pennies on the front steps of the New Jerusalem or set up a faro layout just outside the Pearly Gates.
- 1971, John Prine (lyrics and music), “Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore”, in John Prine:
- 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…
- 2007, “Videotape”, in In Rainbows, performed by Radiohead:
- When I'm at the pearly gates / This'll be on my videotape, my videotape
-
- (by extension) Heaven itself.
References
- The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1611, OCLC 964384981, Revelation 21:21: “And the twelue gates were twelue pearles, euery seuerall gate was of one pearle, and the streete of the city was pure golde, as it were transparent glasse.”.
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