Make Your Point > Archived Issues > PIPE-DREAMY
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PIPE-DREAMY:
Say it "PIPE dree me."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
Pipe-dreamy. It's easy to understand, but, is it a real word? Can we really use it in print?
Oh, yes! Yes, we can!
What qualifies as a "real" word is very much up for discussion. But you can build a case for a word's "realness" with the Oxford English Dictionary, which happens to cite three examples of pipe-dreamy in print, including this one from the writer O. Henry: "La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole" (1910).
And so, I don't imagine the Language Police breaking down O. Henry's door, demanding that he stop using slang or playing with suffixes, and shouting, "That sounds MADE-UP!" and O. Henry shouting back, "EVERY word is made-up!"
You do you, O. Henry.
Other words we've checked out that might not seem "real"--that is, too slangy, too playful, or too made-up--include tony, natty, kerfuffle, toplofty, and skullduggery. Could you define each?
definition:
The phrase "pipe dream" is American and dates back to about 1890. Say that you're smoking an opium pipe: you might see a grand vision of your future, and you might start dreaming about making that vision a reality. Hence, a pipe dream: a hope or a plan that's totally unrealistic, as if you dreamed it up while you were smoking.
Add a hyphen to "pipe dream" and you get the verb, "to pipe-dream," as in "Can we really make this happen, or are we just pipe-dreaming?"
And add the suffix "-y" to get the adjective. Something pipe-dreamy is full of hopes or plans that are totally unrealistic.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech: adjective: "a pipe-dreamy plan," "their vision is pipe-dreamy."
Other forms: pipe dream, pipe-dream, pipe-dreamed, pipe-dreaming.
how to use it:
It's fairly common to call something a "pipe dream." But it's rare to refer to it with the casual, informal adjective "pipe-dreamy."
So, choose "pipe-dreamy" when you want to be casual but emphatic about how stupidly hopeless someone's ideas are. And yes, the tone is often negative and judgmental.
We might talk about pipe-dreamy goals, hopes, plans, schemes, ideas, wish lists, possibilities, etc.
examples:
"As recently as 2014, print advertising was collapsing and the idea that subscribers would pay enough to support the company's expensive global news gathering seemed like a pipe dream."
— Ben Smith, New York Times, 1 March 2020
"The gab you hear sometimes sounds very dreamy indeed. In fact, it sometimes sounds very pipe-dreamy. Many actors, male and female... [sit] around dreaming out loud about how they will practically assassinate the public in the Palace if ever they get a chance."
— Damon Runyon, The Bloodhounds of Broadway, 1901
"But, while deriving strength from Shakespeare, the play also invited comparison, and here it was fatally lacking. Instead of Shakespeare's vigorously imagined misunderstandings and peripeteias, we were given pipe-dreamy vignettes of things as they might have been."
— British Broadcasting Corporation, The Listener, 1981
has this page helped you understand "pipe-dreamy"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "pipe-dreamy" without saying "starry-eyed" or "quixotic."
try it out:
You might be familiar with the story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As the title suggests, it's all about fabulous wealth.
It's full of descriptions like this:
"John saw that the upholstery consisted of a thousand minute and exquisite tapestries of silk, woven with jewels and embroideries, and set upon a background of cloth of gold."
And Fitzgerald once explained why he wrote that story:
"[It] was designed utterly for my own amusement. I was in a mood characterized by a perfect craving for luxury, and the story began as an attempt to feed that craving on imaginary foods."
That's a pipe-dreamy story by a pipe-dreamy author!
With that story in mind as an example, talk about another story, book, show, or film that seems pipe-dreamy. Who was doing the pipe-dreaming: the author, the characters, or both? What are the pipe dreams about?
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
This month, our game is called "Recollections."
In each issue, I'll share a quote from some work--it might be a song, a poem, or a book--and you'll come up with that work's title. You can assemble the title, highlighted in the vertical blue line below, by recalling words to fit into the puzzle. Scrap paper might help!
From the previous issue:
"Like love from a drunken sky,
Confetti falling down all night."
Those words appear in the song "She's My Kind of Rain," by Tim McGraw.
If you'd like to review any of the words from the puzzle, give them a click: machinations, saccharine, jejune, obfuscate, keelhaul, quail, xenophobic, rabidity, ulcer, tacit, zeitgeist, abhorrent.
Try this one today:
"Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even."
In what work does the quote above appear?
1) verb: "to speak against people or things, to disagree with them"
2) noun: "a bunch of sounds heard together that are ugly and harsh"
3) noun: "oddness or weirdness, especially in people's habits"
4) proper adjective: "scary and threatening, as if a sword is hanging above your head"
5) adjective: "really complicated and confusing, like a maze-like set of paths or passages, especially like the one in that 1986 movie with David Bowie as the Goblin King, you know, the one who moves the stars for no one"
6) noun: "an extremely short period of time (literally, a billionth of a second)"
7) adjective: "looking extremely exhausted"
8) adjective: "happy, simple, and peaceful in a way that reminds you of poems and the countryside"
9) verb: "to trade things back and forth, or to talk about things casually"
10) noun: "a certain pace, or the certain way someone walks or runs"
11) adjective: "having no identity, no special qualities, or no interesting uniqueness"
12) noun (and verb): "a restraint or a burden, one that reminds you of being forced to do farm work"
13) verb: "to treat people as if they're just things instead of human beings"
review this word:
A. SOBER.
B. DEPRESSING.
C. ABUNDANTLY CAUTIOUS.
2. A sports writer for the Chicago Tribune said, "Nobody is predicting anything as pipe-dreamy as _____."
A. a boycott
B. a World Series
C. an increase in ticket sales
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Pipe-dreamy. It's easy to understand, but, is it a real word? Can we really use it in print?
The phrase "pipe dream" is American and dates back to about 1890. Say that you're smoking an opium pipe: you might see a grand vision of your future, and you might start dreaming about making that vision a reality. Hence, a pipe dream: a hope or a plan that's totally unrealistic, as if you dreamed it up while you were smoking.
Part of speech: adjective: "a pipe-dreamy plan," "their vision is pipe-dreamy."
It's fairly common to call something a "pipe dream." But it's rare to refer to it with the casual, informal adjective "pipe-dreamy."
"As recently as 2014, print advertising was collapsing and the idea that subscribers would pay enough to support the company's expensive global news gathering seemed like a pipe dream."
Explain the meaning of "pipe-dreamy" without saying "starry-eyed" or "quixotic."
You might be familiar with the story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As the title suggests, it's all about fabulous wealth.
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
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