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Pipe dream

Reader question:

Please explain “pipe dream” in the following: My friend Johnny has this pipe dream about becoming a famous movie star. But it won’t ever happen.

My comments:

Thing about pipe dreams is that they, as explained in the above example, “won’t ever happen”.

I used to privately conjecture that “pipe dream” was a British idiom and having to do with music. In fact I thought pipe dreams are fantastic musings of listeners while being mesmerized by, say, the Scottish bagpipe.

That is not the case. “Pipe dream” is an American idiom, and the pipe refers to the smoking pipe of opium.

It turns out that “pipe dream” actually has to do with drugs, and that is just as well – it explains the “fantastic” part just as fine. Nobody smokes the opium in the olden style any more but the effect of opium on people is well documented. It gives them what is called “a high”. In this state, one feels elated and flamboyant, and possibly – again, I conjecture – all in a drowsy, dreamy, hallucinating way. In this condition, one might dream one of those “pipe dreams”, a fantasy that makes one feel that they can be eternally happy, can beat Mike Tyson in a fist fight, can scale the Himalayas and can conquer the world as a whole.

In short, a pipe dream is a fantastic notion or vain hope. It is what the Chinese call a “day dream” – dreaming in broad daylight – and it won’t come true, or at least it won’t readily come true.