Meaning & use
pipe dream
Last updated
An unrealistic hope or fanciful plan that is unlikely ever to come true.
See it in a sentence
Owning a beachfront house on a teacher's salary felt like a pipe dream.
He dismissed the idea of colonizing Mars anytime soon as a pipe dream.
A note on using this word
The phrase originally referred to the fantastical visions produced by smoking an opium pipe, and today it is used for any wildly optimistic or impractical idea.
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