A place or time of ultimate happiness; paradise or heaven. The term comes from the Bible, in which God promises the land of Canaan to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants (Genesis 12:7). Later, the name became attached to the Holy Land (“The land of repromission, that men calles the Holy Land,” Sir John Maundeville, Travels, ca. 1400), and still later it was extended to any place viewed as wonderful (“To all these exiled sects America was the land of promise,” William Hepworth Dixon, William Penn, 1851) as well as to heaven. In modern times Israel is often called the promised land for Jews.