FreeScrabbleDictionary

dream

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
8
Words With Friends
9
Letters
5
Pronunciation
/dɹiːm/ (UK)
See all 4 pronunciations
/dɹiːm/ (UK) · [d̠͡ɹ̠˔ʷiːm] (UK) · /dʒɹiːm/ (UK) · [d͡ʒɹ̠ʷiːm] (UK)

Definition of dream

10 senses · 3 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (countable)Imaginary events seen in the mind while sleeping.
    “have a dream”
    “Last night I had a dream about an immortal snail that chased me around and could kill me if it touched me.”
    “I had a dream where they introduced a new character in Homestuck named Blave, who was just Dave but blue.”
    “I had a dream that they updated The Emoji Movie for Gen Alpha.”
    “Last night I had a dream I was on a plane.”
See all 10 definitions

noun

  1. (countable)Imaginary events seen in the mind while sleeping.
    “have a dream”
    “Last night I had a dream about an immortal snail that chased me around and could kill me if it touched me.”
    “I had a dream where they introduced a new character in Homestuck named Blave, who was just Dave but blue.”
    “I had a dream that they updated The Emoji Movie for Gen Alpha.”
    “Last night I had a dream I was on a plane.”
  2. (countable, figuratively)A hope or wish.
    “have a dream”
    “fulfil a dream”
    “harbour a dream”
    “realize a dream”
    “So this was my future home, I thought![…]Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.”
  3. A visionary scheme; a wild conceit; an idle fancy.
    “live in a dream”
    “wake up from a dream”
    “impossible dream”
    “a dream of bliss”
    “the dream of his youth”
  4. (US, abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, uncountable)Acronym of development, relief, and education for alien minors.
    “For years, my state of Washington tried to pass its own state Dream Act. […] If President Trump will not protect Dreamers, Congress must immediately pass the bipartisan DREAM Act and provide permanent protection for these young Americans.”

verb

  1. (intransitive)To see imaginary events in one's mind while sleeping.
    “Although people primarily dream during the REM phase of sleeping, they can dream during non-REM sleep as well.”
    “Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry, "Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."”
  2. (intransitive)To hope, to wish.
    “Lucy dreams of becoming a scientist when she'll grow up.”
  3. (intransitive)To daydream.
    “Stop dreaming and get back to work.”
  4. (transitive)To envision as an imaginary experience (usually when asleep).
    “I dreamed a vivid dream last night.”
    “And still they dream that they shall still succeed.”
    “At length in sleep their bodies they compose, / And dreamt the future fight, and early rose.”
  5. (intransitive)To consider the possibility (of).
    “I wouldn't dream of snubbing you in public.”
    “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
    “But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. […]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window[…], and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.”

adj

  1. (not-comparable)Ideal; perfect.
    “Gonna drive back down where you once belonged / In the back of a dream car, twenty foot long”
    “If a girl who talked like that was not his dream girl, he didn't know a dream girl when he heard one.”
    “England found chances a rarity, although Liverpool striker Solanke almost made it a dream debut in the closing seconds, only to miscontrol at the far post.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewgʰ- Proto-West Germanic *draum Old English drēam Middle English drem English dream From Middle English drem, from Old English drēam (“music, joy”), from Proto-West Germanic *draum, from…

See full etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewgʰ- Proto-West Germanic *draum Old English drēam Middle English drem English dream From Middle English drem, from Old English drēam (“music, joy”), from Proto-West Germanic *draum, from Proto-Germanic *draumaz, from earlier *draugmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrowgʰ-mos, from *dʰrewgʰ- (“to deceive, injure, damage”). The sense of "dream", though not attested in Old English, may still have been present (compare Old Saxon drōm (“bustle, revelry, jubilation", also "dream”)), and was undoubtedly reinforced later in Middle English by Old Norse draumr (“dream”), from same Proto-Germanic root. Cognate with Scots dreme (“dream”), Saterland Frisian Droom (“dream”), West Frisian dream (“dream”), Dutch droom (“dream”), German Traum (“dream”), Limburgish Droum (“dream”), Luxembourgish Dram (“dream”), Yiddish טרוים (troym, “dream”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål drøm (“dream”), Faroese dreymur (“dream”), Icelandic draumur (“dream”), Norwegian Nynorsk draum (“dream”), Swedish dröm (“dream”). Related also to Old Norse draugr (“ghost, undead, spectre”), Dutch bedrog (“deception, deceit”), German Trug (“deception, illusion”). The verb is from Middle English dremen, possibly (see below) from Old English drīeman (“to make a joyous sound with voice or with instrument; rejoice; sing a song; play on an instrument”), from Proto-Germanic *draumijaną, *draugmijaną (“to be festive, dream, hallucinate”), from the noun. Cognate with Scots dreme (“to dream”), Saterland Frisian drööme (“to dream”), West Frisian dreame (“to dream”), Dutch dromen (“to dream”), German träumen (“to dream”), Luxembourgish dreemen (“to dream”), Yiddish טרוימען (troymen, “to dream”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål drømme (“to dream”), Faroese droyma (“to dream”), Icelandic dreyma (“to dream”), Norwegian Nynorsk drømma, drømme, drøyma, drøyme (“to dream”), Swedish drömma (“to dream, muse”). more details The derivation from Old English drēam is controversial, since the word itself is only attested in writing in its meaning of “joy, mirth, musical sound”. Possibly there was a separate word drēam meaning “images seen while sleeping”, which was avoided in literature due to potential confusion with the “joy” sense. Otherwise, the modern sense must have been borrowed from another Germanic language, most probably Old Norse. Since this is the common sense in all Germanic languages outside the British isles, a spontaneous development from “joy, mirth” to “dream” in Middle English is hardly conceivable. In Old Saxon, the cognate drōm did mean “dream”, but was a rare word. Attested words for “sleeping vision” in Old English, both of which appeared in The Dream of the Rood, were mǣting (Middle English mæte, mete), from an unclear source, and swefn (Modern English sweven), from Proto-Germanic *swefnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *swepno-, *swep-; compare Ancient Greek ὕπνος (húpnos, “sleep”).

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