El Dorado << `ehl` duh RAH doh >> is the name of a fictitious kingdom of enormous wealth located in South America. Many European explorers searched for the kingdom, including Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada of Spain and Sir Walter Raleigh of England. But none of the explorers found it. The term has become common for any legendary place of fabulous riches.
El Dorado, which means the gilded in Spanish, was originally the name of a legendary South American king whose body was regularly covered with gold dust. The king would float on a raft onto a lake while emeralds and gold objects were thrown into the lake. The legend probably referred to a similar ceremony performed by a Chibcha Indian chief in what is now the South American nation of Colombia.
