dreaming

Pluraldreamings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A single experience of imagining images or stories in the mind, whether during sleep or in a waking reverie.

   A brief dreaming overtook him at his desk, full of mountains and open sky.

   Her childhood dreamings of distant cities eventually led her to travel the world.

   Similarreverie, daydream, vision, fantasy

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of dream.

   He spent the whole lecture dreaming of faraway places.

   Dreaming of a better life, she saved every spare dollar.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs here. As a participle it builds the progressive (she was dreaming) and opens phrases like dreaming of faraway places. As a gerund it names the activity itself (dreaming costs nothing). With of it can also mean weighing a possibility: dreaming of leaving. Once it takes an article or a plural, as in a brief dreaming or dreamings, it has become the countable noun.

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