pipe dream

1. 1.

   a fantastic but vain hope (from fantasies induced by the opium pipe)

   “I have this pipe dream about being emperor of the universe”

   Synonymsdream

   Broaderfantasy

Questions about pipe dream

What does pipe dream mean?

pipe dream means "a fantastic but vain hope (from fantasies induced by the opium pipe)".

What is another word for pipe dream?

Close synonyms include dream. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pipe dream a common word?

pipe dream is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.