dream

Meanings

Noun

• Imaginary events seen in the mind while sleeping.
• A hope or wish.
• A visionary scheme; a wild conceit; an idle fancy.

Verb

• To see imaginary events in one's mind while sleeping.
• To hope, to wish.
• To daydream.
• To envision as an imaginary experience (usually when asleep).
• To consider the possibility (of).

Adjective

• Ideal; perfect.

Origin

• From Middle English drem, from Old English drēam, from Proto-West Germanic *draum, from Proto-Germanic *draumaz, from earlier *draugmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrowgʰ-mos, from *dʰrewgʰ-.
• The sense of "dream", though not attested in Old English, may still have been present (compare Old Saxon drōm), and was undoubtedly reinforced later in Middle English by Old Norse draumr, from same Proto-Germanic root.
• Cognate with Scots dreme ("dream"), North Frisian drom ("dream"), West Frisian dream ("dream"), Low German Droom, Dutch droom ("dream"), German Traum ("dream"), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål drøm, Norwegian Nynorsk draum, Swedish dröm ("dream"), Icelandic draumur ("dream"). Related also to Old English drēag ("spectre, apparition"), Dutch bedrog ("deception, deceit"), German Trug ("deception, illusion").
• 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 -, the cognate drōm did mean “dream”, but was a rare word.
• Attested words for “sleeping vision” in Old English 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 ("sleep").
• The verb is from Middle English dremen, possibly (see above) 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, from the noun. Cognate with Scots dreme ("to dream"), West Frisian dreame ("to dream"), Dutch dromen ("to dream"), German träumen ("to dream"), Swedish drömma ("to dream, muse"), Icelandic dreyma ("to dream").