Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A state of abstracted musing; daydreaming.
- n. A daydream: "I felt caught up in a reverie of years long past” ( William Styron).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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.
- n. A waking dream; a brown study; an imaginative, fanciful, or fantastic train of thought; a day-dream.
- n. The object or product of reverie or idle fancy; a visionary scheme, plan, aim, ideal, or the like; a dream.
- n. In music, an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.
Wiktionary
- n. An extravagant conceit of the imagination; a vision.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A loose or irregular train of thought occurring in musing or mediation; deep musing; daydream.
- n. rare An extravagant conceit of the fancy; a vision.
WordNet 3.0
- n. absentminded dreaming while awake
- n. an abstracted state of absorption
Etymologies
- 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)
- 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.”
“The inheritance spent, the painters indulge in reverie, romanticizing the past, retreating into what Jung would call the collective unconscious.”
“Meaning may retreat in reverie, but like the repressed it always returns.”
“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.”
“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”
“I'm so lost in reverie that the pole almost flies out of my hand.”
“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.”
“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.”
“& began to feel if my own heart was in my bosom. when once Bedford you begin to reflect rationally a reverie is over.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘reverie’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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#faveword
Words chosen as favorites for the Twitter hashtag #faveword.
autumnal, grotto, chiaroscuro, sfumato, homunculus, zing, zest, effervescent, bewitch, avuncular, susurrus, Styrofoam and 205 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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vocab 2
accrue, lenity, pellucid, smitten, implore, scrupulous, recalcitrant, melancholy, trudge, reverie, convivial, corrigible and 19 more...
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reams of dreams
imagine, muse, aspire, reverie, aisling, mette, sweven, hatch, fancy, Puck, Tangerine Dream, Eingana and 30 more...
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GRE Passage Words
admonish, ephemeral, ambivalence, antipathy, antithetical, countenance, deride, eclectic, enigma, ethos, expediency, impinge and 15 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
Verba Dilecta
delectable, notate, pauciloquy, paucity, pauciloquent, paucify, interscapilium, uropygium, inferna, nota, equipollent, prepollent and 677 more...
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word tank
a couple words
logolepsy, nefarious, quintessential, tintinnabulation, serendipity, rhapsody, palimpsest, panoply, mellifluous, imbue, loquacious, garrulous and 174 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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collection
sanguine, vie, antebellum, glacial, treacly, iconoclast, lissom, anathema, serendipity, parsimonious, histrionic, contemptuous and 279 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for reverie.

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