Holy Grail

See also: Sayings | Vision

1. The highly prized things that we seek to achieve or obtain, sometimes with open disregard for its impossibility; an idealistic goal.2. A concept pure in intention.


1. Often a vision needed to reach goals. For example a holy grail for privacy advocates would be to have an information system which is Future-Proof. To obtain this goal a vision is still required. In the case of the Ubiquitous Computing vision, it is the holy grail which remains unknown.

Possible usage and meaning:

Translation: Open Source on the desktop is something that would solve a lot of problems.
  • “The latest Sony Vaio but with fiber optic networking would be the Holy Grail of laptops.”
Translation: Fiber Optic networking is very cutting-edge and Sony’s Vaio laptops are likewise cutting edge. Together would be extremely fast but technically not feasable (at least right now).


2. “Pure” as in virginally chaste, as in utterly holy, unmarringly and unwaveringly Good and Right in the world; benevolent in the extreme.

Often, arguments exist to link this concept that of a utopia, and claim that it is so pure as to almost be easily corruptible out of hand. Also, arguments exist which link Holy Grail concepts to zealotry and claim that the strong belief people have in a “Holy Grail” concept is not logically backed.

Example: a Blue-Sky list

TakeDown.NET -> “Holy-Grail