Dreamtime

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

  1. the mythological era in Australian Aboriginal cultures when ancestral beings created the landscape and established laws | the period in Aboriginal Australian tradition when ancestral spirits shaped the land and established cultural laws
  2. a sacred chronological framework in Aboriginal Australian belief systems describing ancestral creation and the establishment of spiritual and social order
  3. the foundational mythological epoch in Australian Aboriginal worldviews where ancestral beings fashioned geography and instituted the customs governing communities

Etymology: Dreamtime is a modern English coinage, first recorded in the late 19th century, used to describe the Aboriginal Australian understanding of creation, ancestral spirits, and the spiritual dimension underlying physical reality. The term does not derive from ancient roots or borrowed vocabulary; rather, it was invented by English-speaking anthropologists and settlers as a translation concept for the Aboriginal Australian concept known in various Indigenous languages as "Dreaming," "the Dreaming," or "Dreamtime" itself in some English-influenced Aboriginal English usage. The word emerged from direct contact between English speakers and Aboriginal peoples, particularly as European settlement expanded across Australia in the latter half of the 1800s. Early ethnographers and missionaries sought English equivalents for Aboriginal spiritual and cosmological ideas, and "Dreamtime" proved useful—combining the everyday English word "dream" with "time" to suggest a temporal-spiritual dimension distinct from ordinary waking existence. The term gained wider currency in academic and popular discourse through 20th-century anthropological writing, particularly after the mid-20th century when Aboriginal art and culture received increased scholarly and public attention. It is important to note that "Dreamtime" is not the Aboriginal peoples' own word for this concept; it is an English approximation created by outsiders. Many Aboriginal communities prefer "the Dreaming" or use their own language terms. Nevertheless, "Dreamtime" has become established in English as the conventional term for this aspect of Aboriginal Australian spirituality and cosmology, appearing in standard English dictionaries and anthropological literature since at least the early-to-mid 20th century.