reverie

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A state of dreaming while awake; a loose or irregular train of thought; musing or meditation; daydream.

   “If you rouse from your reverie, you are restless and agitated; your eye wanders round in one perpetual search; and if, perchance, as has happened once or twice, he has only passed in the distance, your eye brightens, your cheek flushes crimson, and your whole frame quivers with uncontrollable emotion!”

   “we sat / But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, […]”

   “Within the branching shade of Reverie / Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be / ⁠Like woman's budding day-dream spirit-fann'd.”

   “He fell into a reverie, a most dangerous state of mind for a chauffeur, since a fall into reverie on the part of a driver may mean a fall into a ravine on the part of the machine.”

   “Even the blithely unselfconscious Homer is more than a little freaked out by West’s private reverie, and encourages his spawn to move slowly away without making eye contact with the crazy man.”

2. (countable, uncountable)An extravagant conceit of the imagination; a vision.

   “If the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool; There are infinite reveries , numberless extravagancies , and a perpetual train of vanities , which pass through both .”

3. (archaic)A caper, a frolic; merriment.

verb

1. To daydream.

   “By this time the mouth begins to feel uneasy—I pick another cheroot from Cotton’s last box, and walk up and down reverie-ing as before.”

   “So now the dream of all my life is realized, and I have seen snow mountains! When I was quite a little child of eight years old I used to reverie about them, and when I heard the name of the snow-covered Sierra de la Summa Paz (perfect peace) the idea was completed; and I thenceforth always thought of eternal snow and perfect peace together, and longed to see the one and drink in the other.”

   “During my twelfth and thirteenth years I often reveried in school, or less often at night, with penis quite erect—imagining perhaps myself in company with several of the girls that most attracted me on a Pacific Island, and I would feel and see myself again and again in sexual intercourse.”

   “In her old days she’ll either be Madame Representativewoman from the same said X-town, or a cheerful old philanderer, pardon me, I mean philanthropist, living in seclusion and reverying in the shades of the past.”

   “He reveried on.”