Rev. Valerie's Reveries

This blog contains personal reflections from Unitarian Universalist minister Valerie Mapstone Ackerman.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Reverie defined

From Dictionary.com

Word of the Day for Saturday, October 10, 2009

reverie \REV-uh-ree\, noun:


1. A state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing.
2. A daydream.
3. A fantastic, visionary, or impractical idea.
4. Music. An instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.

Walking seems to have become Rousseau's chosen mode of being because within a walk he is able to live in thought and reverie, to be self-sufficient, and thus to survive the world he feels has betrayed him.
-- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

He was pulled out of his reverie by the buzzing of his cell phone.
-- Robert O'Harrow, No Place to Hide

From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.
-- William Cowper, The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 188.

Reverie is from Middle English, revelry, from Old French, from rever, to dream.