Dreamscape

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surreal imaginary realm or landscape experienced during sleep or visualized through creative imagination, characterized by illogical sequences and fantastical elements
2. a surreal mental realm featuring illogical sequences and fantastical imagery that emerges during sleep or imaginative visualization
3. an imaginary environment composed of dreamlike, impossible landscapes and scenarios that exist within the mind during slumber or conscious fantasy

Etymology: Dreamscape is a deliberate blend rather than an ancient inheritance. It joins "dream," which traces back through Middle English "drem" and Old English "drēam," to "-scape," the suffix that English took from "landscape" and then began attaching to other nouns to mean a view or realm of some kind. The result is a word that pictures dreams as places you can wander through, not just events that happen to you. The root of "dream" is older than English itself. Its Proto-Germanic ancestor "draumaz" points back to a common source among the early Germanic languages, and in Old English "drēam" meant joy, music or festive revelry rather than the images of sleep. The sense of a vision seen during sleep appears later, in Middle English, so the modern dream carries a shift from merriment to nightly imagery. Because "-scape" arrived in English as a stand-alone picture of land, "dreamscape" inherits that visual frame. Its formation is straightforward: a compound of two English elements, put together to describe a dream as a landscape.

Synonyms: fantasy, vision