Dream on

Wise Words: a pipe dream

Do you dream? Do you daydream? In business, it’s good to have dreams, but it’s probably not a good idea to spend all day daydreaming about them.

What about the dreams that come to you in the night? Do you ever have dreams in English? Is it a good thing if you do?

On his blog, David Crystal, the author and linguist, has written an excellent post on the topic of dreaming in a foreign language. He received a number of comments from people about their individual experiences of linguistic dreams. Some, as you would expect with such a topic, were totally bizarre. The general consensus, however, seemed to be that dreaming in a foreign language must be a good thing — but that you shouldn’t trust everything that you hear or speak in your dreams. It may just be jabberwocky.

Jabberwocky was a word coined by Lewis Carroll for a poem in his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, which is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It’s a wonderful word from “Wonderland”. It simply means “a nonsense language”.

Carroll's Alice is in the news again as Tim Burton’s film of the novels has just been released. It’s a story about a fantasy world where dreams and nightmares come to life. My favourite scene in the original story revolves around the caterpillar character. He’s smoking a hookah when Alice first meets him. (The suggestion is that he’s an opium addict.) It may be a child's story, but there are some adult moments, too. I can’t comment on Alan Rickman’s portrayal of the caterpillar in Tim Burton’s movie as I haven’t seen it yet, but I do know that the cartoon version from Disney is a delight to watch.

Dreams, hookahs and opium: what do they have to do with business English? I hope this image of a high caterpillar will help you to remember a useful business expression: a pipe dream.

If an idea or a scheme is a pipe dream it is probably unattainable. Originally, a pipe dream was a dream that someone experienced while smoking an opium pipe.

It’s good to have dreams — whatever the language. Just make sure you turn the better ones into reality. They shouldn’t all end up as pipe dreams.

More expressions with “dream”

Informally, we often use the expressions “in your dreams” or “dream on”, to show that we think something will not happen:

• "We’ll be the market leader before you know it!"
  "In your dreams!"

We use “like a dream” to show that something is working well:

• "Does the software work now?"
  "Like a dream!"

When we talk about new ideas, we often use “dream up”:

• "Could you dream up a new way of marketing the boots?"