Dreamer: A Compliment and an Insult in the Same Word
A dreamer is someone with big imagination, or someone who will not face facts. Tone decides which one you mean.
Call someone a dreamer and you have said two opposite things at once: that they can imagine what does not exist yet, and that they may never build it. Songs and speeches use the flattering sense; school reports and job reviews use the other one.
- Someone with ambitious visions. *The company was founded by a dreamer.*
- Someone impractical or inattentive. *Stop being such a dreamer and finish the form.*
- A person who is dreaming in sleep. *The dreamer woke suddenly.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | dreamer | A hopeless dreamer. |
| Plural | dreamers | A country of dreamers. |
| Verb | dream | I dream of a garden. |
| Past | dreamed / dreamt | I dreamt about it. |
| Adjective | dreamy | A dreamy expression. |
How it is used in a sentence
- He was a dreamer, and the factory was his dream made solid.The admiring sense, usually paired with an achievement.
- You are a dreamer if you think this will be finished by Friday.Here it means unrealistic.
- The teacher wrote that he was a dreamer in class.A gentle way of saying inattentive.
The shades between
- Visionary โ the fully positive word
- Idealist โ guided by principles more than by conditions
- Dreamer โ could be either, decided by tone
- Daydreamer โ attention elsewhere, no ambition implied
- Fantasist โ the fully negative one, close to lying
*Dream* has a strange history. In Old English, *drฤam* meant joy, music and revelry; the sleeping-vision sense may have entered from Norse or from a related sense that went unrecorded. Whichever way, the modern word carries the older word's warmth.
Dreamed or dreamt?
Both are correct. Dreamt is more common in British English, dreamed in American English.
Is dreamer negative?
Not by itself. In song lyrics and speeches it is a compliment; in an argument about deadlines it is not.