wishful thinking

1. 1.

   the illusion that what you wish for is actually true

   Broaderillusion

Questions about wishful thinking

What does wishful thinking mean?

wishful thinking means "the illusion that what you wish for is actually true".

Is wishful thinking a common word?

wishful thinking 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.