說給小孩聽的魔法故事
這一家就是那本書本身：單獨一篇故事，或整類這樣的故事。
noun · A2
A story for children in which magic things happen. Fairy tales usually have kings, queens, witches or talking animals, and the good people are usually safe by the end.
童話故事
核心畫面
You can picture a fairy tale as the book a child is read at bedtime. Inside it, a poor girl walks into a dark forest, an animal speaks, and a hundred years of sleep end with somebody waking up. Life in that book does what life outside it never does: the lost thing is found, the youngest child wins, and the ending is the one you were hoping for. Both of the other uses reach back into that book. When someone calls your excuse a fairy tale, they mean it belongs in there and not in this room. When someone calls a wedding a fairy tale, they mean that for once real life behaved the way the book does.
「fairy tale」可以想成一本睡前唸的故事書。書裡面，窮女孩走進黑森林，動物會說話，睡了一百年的人最後會醒。書…更多收起
「fairy tale」可以想成一本睡前唸的故事書。書裡面，窮女孩走進黑森林，動物會說話，睡了一百年的人最後會醒。書裡的世界會做現實不會做的事：丟掉的東西找得回來，最小的孩子最後會贏，結局是你希望的那一個。其他兩個用法都可以想成回頭去指這本書。有人說你的藉口是 a fairy tale，意思是「那種事只活在書裡，不在這個房間裡」。有人說一場婚禮是 a fairy tale，意思是現實難得一次照著書裡的樣子走。From the word’s history
The words are a word-for-word copy of French conte de fees, the phrase coined in the late 17th century by the writer Madame d'Aulnoy: conte is a story, fees are fairies. So the magical characters were written into the name from the beginning.
這組字是把法文 conte de fees 一個字一個字搬過來的：conte 是故事，fees 是仙子。這個說法在十七世紀末由法國作家 Madame d'Aulnoy 帶起來。所以「故事裡有魔法人物」這件事，本來就寫在名字裡面。
Wiktionary entry for fairy tale (packet source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:474667453:48627): Calque of French conte de fees, coined by French writer Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century.
Two branches
現實裡不會發生的事
童話最大的特點是「那種事現實不會發生」。把這句話往兩個方向推，就得到這一家的兩個意思：往壞的推是「所以我不信」，往好的推是「所以難得一見」。
noun · B2
A story or an explanation that someone has made up, which you find hard to believe. Calling what someone says a fairy tale is a way of saying you think it is not true.
編出來的說詞
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
fairy talenoun/ˈfɛɹi ˌteɪl/
- 1
A folktale or literary story featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.
- I used to love reading fairy tales when I was a child.
- The Wife of Bathes Tale is evidently a Fairy-tale. It thus commences: In olde dayes of the king Artour, / Of which that Bretons speken gret honour, / All was this land fulfilled of faerie.
- 2
The literary genre of these stories.
- Their dresses were rich, and when they came bounding forward, their shapes of silver tissue, with their feathered diadems and faces of animated beauty, they might be imagined into scarcely less than the creations of fairy tale.
- Mr. Shimerda kneels in front of the tree in prayer; a praying figure under a magic tree is a common one in fairy tale.
- 3
A fabricated or misleading account meant to deceive, such as an exaggerated excuse.
- He's telling us another fairy tale about how great the software will be.
- If emigrants will submit to the "fairy tales" of Mr. Thomas, and fall in with his suggestions, they must patiently submit to the disagreeable consequences.
- 4
A delightful and ideal situation of a kind attained by very few.
- I've been living in a fairy tale since I met Joe.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。