Word of the Day

Thursday January 28, 2010

reverie [rev-uh-ree]

noun

A loose or irregular train of thought occurring in musing or mediation; deep musing.
A daydream.
An extravagant conceit of the fancy; a vision.
(Of Music) An instrumental composition of a dreamy character.

Perhaps this explains why one of the themes of Haitian naive painting (one of the glories of Haitian culture) is lush forests inhabited by sleek African animals and exotic birds. The inheritance spent, the painters indulge in reverie, romanticizing the past, retreating into what Jung would call the collective unconscious.

Theodore Dalrymple, "Haiti's apocalypse", National Post, Jan 19, 2010
Mountains are still breathtaking. Cities at night look like Oz rising from darkness. The huge expanses of the West can send you into a reverie about what it would be like to live in a tiny cabin at the end of that skinny road ending in that remote valley, even without anti-anxiety meds. Add an occasional narration from the pilot, and it's the best in-flight entertainment you can get.

Barbara Brotman, "Silent flights a lowly affair", Chicago Tribune, Jan 18, 2010
"Never mind, Darry; if I had a lot of money I'd buy you the biggest and softest mattress I could find, so that you'd have nothing to do but lie off by yourself, look up at the green leaves and dream your summers away. That lying on your back and looking up at the sky is what you call reverie, isn't it?"

H. Irving Hancock (1866 - 1922) An American chemist and writer. The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics (1911)

Origin of the Word

Reverie, approximately 1366, derives from Old French reverie "revelry, raving, delirium," from resver "to dream, wander or rave."