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Meaning & History
Anglicized form of Chinese 上都 (Shangdu), derived from 上 (shàng) meaning "above, upper" and 都 (dū) meaning "city". This was the summer capital of the 13th-century Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, located in Inner Mongolia, China. It became known to English speakers after it appeared in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan (1816), and it has been used figuratively to refer to a paradise since then.