Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A state of abstracted musing; daydreaming.
  • noun A daydream.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A state of mental abstraction in which more or less aimless fancy predominates over the reasoning faculty; dreamy meditation; fanciful musing.
  • noun A waking dream; a brown study; an imaginative, fanciful, or fantastic train of thought; a day-dream.
  • noun The object or product of reverie or idle fancy; a visionary scheme, plan, aim, ideal, or the like; a dream.
  • noun In music, an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A loose or irregular train of thought occurring in musing or mediation; deep musing; daydream.
  • noun rare An extravagant conceit of the fancy; a vision.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An extravagant conceit of the imagination; a vision.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun absentminded dreaming while awake
  • noun an abstracted state of absorption

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, revelry, from Old French, from rever, to dream.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French reverie ("revelry"), from resver ("to dream, to rave"), of uncertain origin. Compare rave. Attested as “caper, frolic,” from 14thC; as “daydreaming” from 1657.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word reverie.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The name I gave my computer.

    December 23, 2008

  • I named my computer slurvian.

    December 23, 2008

  • My laptop is called Boxer and my desktop Ursula.

    December 23, 2008

  • I would have named my computer, but it never comes when I call it anyway.

    December 23, 2008

  • My computer answers when I call it by its name:

    telofy@reverie:~$ ping reverie

    PING reverie (127.0.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.

    64 bytes from reverie (127.0.1.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.047 ms

    December 23, 2008

  • But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,

    So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat

    But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,

    Perchance upon the future man: the walls

    Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped,

    And gradually the powers of the night,

    That range above the region of the wind,

    Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up

    Through all the silent spaces of the worlds,

    Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

    Tennyson, The Princess (Conclusion)

    June 10, 2009