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  1. reverie love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A state of abstracted musing; daydreaming.
  2. n. A daydream: "I felt caught up in a reverie of years long past” ( William Styron).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A state of mental abstraction in which more or less aimless fancy predominates over the reasoning faculty; dreamy meditation; fanciful musing. The mind may be occupied, according to the age, tastes, or pursuits of the individual, by calculations, by profound metaphysical speculations, by fanciful visions, or by such trifling and transitory objects as to make no impression on consciousness, so that the period of reverie is left an entire blank in the memory. The most obvious external feature marking this state is the apparent unconsciousness or imperfect perception of external objects.
  2. n. A waking dream; a brown study; an imaginative, fanciful, or fantastic train of thought; a day-dream.
  3. n. The object or product of reverie or idle fancy; a visionary scheme, plan, aim, ideal, or the like; a dream.
  4. n. In music, an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An extravagant conceit of the imagination; a vision.

GNU Webster's 1913

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

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. absentminded dreaming while awake
  2. n. an abstracted state of absorption

Etymologies

  1. 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. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English, revelry, from Old French, from rever, to dream. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The bower becomes significant, then, as the externalization of this internal, unreachable environment where any kind of reverie is possible; for Kitty, under constant surveillance, the bower represents a winsome retreat that "possessed such a charm over her senses, as constantly to tranquillize her mind and quiet her spirits," a place which she believed "alone could restore her to herself" (193).”

    'Pleasure is now, and ought to be, your business': Stealing Sexuality in Jane Austen's _Juvenilia_

  • “He takes refuge in reverie, even turning to his dead mother (Sophia Loren) and influential memories from his youth.”

    'Nine' is short on a few counts, including dialogue, music

  • “The inheritance spent, the painters indulge in reverie, romanticizing the past, retreating into what Jung would call the collective unconscious.”

    Haiti: an act of Devil « Anglican Samizdat

  • “Meaning may retreat in reverie, but like the repressed it always returns.”

    Captivation and Liberty in Wordsworth's Poems on Music

  • “I found myself lost in reverie, listening to the beat of the drum – unpredictable and incoherent mixed with the quick and violent strumming of the Tar.”

    Archive 2008-03-01

  • “Cornell is talking about these things in reverie: the little store nearby where you can find star fish butterflies in little boxes driftwood and in the antiques store the things from Asia inlaid wood”

    Boing Boing: March 26, 2006 - April 1, 2006 Archives

  • “I'm so lost in reverie that the pole almost flies out of my hand.”

    Between Here and the Yellow Sea

  • “He has been scouting ahead, in search of game, and now, as he takes his time returning, his reverie is interrupted by the sight of another rider heading toward the wagons.”

    Excerpt: Snow Mountain Passage by James Houston

  • “As my feet strayed through the unpeopled country, my thoughts rambled through the universe, and I was least miserable when I could, absorbed in reverie, forget the passage of the hours.”

    III.10

  • “& began to feel if my own heart was in my bosom. when once Bedford you begin to reflect rationally a reverie is over.”

    Letter 50

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synonyms (8)

Words with the same meaning

  1. daydream
  1. vision
  1. fancy
  1. castle in the air
  1. daydreaming
  1. air castle
  1. oneirism
  1. castle in Spain

equivalents (1)

Other words for ‘reverie’

  1. revery

hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. dreaming
  1. dream

same context (23)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. contemplation
  2. abstraction
  3. trance
  4. musings
  1. lethargy
  2. slumber
  3. ecstasy
  4. reminiscence
  1. revery
  2. sadness
  3. stupor
  4. exaltation
  1. anticipations
  2. adoration
  3. contentment
  4. imaginings
  1. delirium
  2. melancholy
  3. rumination
  4. solitude
  1. fascination
  2. doze
  3. fervor

rhymes (1)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. every

reverse dictionary (26)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. dream
  2. resverie
  3. reverist
  4. revery
  5. daydream
  1. muser
  2. self-involution
  3. alnascharism
  4. aphelexia
  5. bemuse
  1. disentrance
  2. dreamily
  3. dreaminess
  4. dreamland
  5. dreamy
  1. reverie
  2. brown study
  3. visionary
  4. lapse
  5. recall
  1. amusement
  2. contemplation
  3. dump
  4. lose
  5. muse
  1. nocturne

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. formal

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tagging (1)

Words tagged ‘reverie’

  1. reveriw

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Lists

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Comments

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  • milosrdenstvi 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) Jun 10, 2009

  • Telofy 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
    Dec 22, 2008

  • reesetee I would have named my computer, but it never comes when I call it anyway. Dec 22, 2008

  • yarb My laptop is called Boxer and my desktop Ursula. Dec 22, 2008

  • whichbe I named my computer slurvian. Dec 22, 2008

  • Telofy The name I gave my computer. Dec 22, 2008

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‘reverie’ has been looked up 4817 times, loved by 36 people, added to 118 lists, commented on 6 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.