Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

pipe dream

noun

any fantastic notion, hope, or story: Her plans for a movie career are just a pipe dream.

Dictionary.com Free Toolbar Dictionary.com Define Pipe dream Instantly. Faster Page Loads With Fewer Ads.

Origin:
1895–1900, Americanism

:10

:09

:08

:07

:06

:05

:04

:03

:02

:01

Pipe dream is always a great word to know.

So is doohickey. Does it mean:

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Dictionary.com Unabridged

verb (used without object), -dreamed or -dreamt, -dream·ing.

to indulge in pipe dreams; fantasize.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source

Link To pipe dream

Collins

World English Dictionary

pipe dream

—n
	a fanciful or impossible plan or hope

[alluding to dreams produced by smoking an opium pipe]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

pipe dream

A fantastic notion or vain hope, as in I'd love to have one home in the mountains and another at the seashore, but that's just a pipe dream. Alluding to the fantasies induced by smoking an opium pipe, this term has been used more loosely since the late 1800s.

Word Dynamo By Dictionary.com

Searching for pipe dream?
How many words do you actually know?

FIND OUT

Matching Quote

"Quite different from them [abstractions of animal nature] in origin and intent, but confused with them in form, are those other companions of Dionysus, Pan and his children. Home-spun dream of simple people, and like them in the uneventful tenour of his existence, he has almost no story; he is but a presence; the spiritual form of Arcadia, and the ways of human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the sedges of the brook Molpeia."

-Walter Pater

Partners:Word Bloglines Citysearch The Daily Beast Ask Answers Ask Kids Life123 Sendori Thesaurus

About Privacy Policy Terms of Use API Careers Advertise with Us Contact Us Help

pipe dream

pipe dream

pipe-dream