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pipe dream
1noun
- any fantastic notion, hope, or story:
Her plans for a movie career are just a pipe dream.
pipe-dream
2[ pahyp-dreem ]
verb (used without object)
- to indulge in pipe dreams; fantasize.
pipe dream
noun
- a fanciful or impossible plan or hope
Word History and Origins
Origin of pipe dream1
Word History and Origins
Origin of pipe dream1
Idioms and Phrases
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.Example Sentences
I was drawn to The Class for different reasons—chiefly, the pipe dream of achieving a tighter and tauter backside.
First of all, the idea that Childers ever had any kind of chance of winning a Senate seat in Mississippi was a pipe dream.
But getting our divided, dysfunctional Congress to agree on a course of action seems like a pipe dream.
Yet it's a pipe dream to hope for a trancendent figure to help the GOP cleanse itself of the fringe.
In other words, in the realm of what has been called the “bio-doc,” objectivity is an elusive pipe dream.
I was about to give you a message from his majesty our king, but if you're on a pipe dream don't let me call you home.
But how among countless suggestions is a "cause" to know the difference between a true invention and a pipe-dream?
This is no pipe dream or a simple newspaper yarn, but the plain truth.
I have been trying to believe that what he told me isn't altogether a pipe-dream, but it sounds mightily like one.
"Sounds like a pipe-dream," commented Matt, when his chum had finished.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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