reverie
- A state of pleasant, dreamy abstraction or fanciful musing.
- A musical composition suggestive of a daydream.
In a sentence
- She sat by the window, lost in a reverie about summers spent at her grandmother's farmhouse.
- The distant sound of church bells pulled him suddenly out of his reverie.
Usage note. Reverie implies a pleasant, gentle abstraction; avoid using it for nightmares or distressing mental wandering, where 'rumination' or 'obsession' would be more precise.
Where it comes from
English reverie — “pleasant daydream” · entered English 17th c.
From French 'rêverie', meaning 'dreaming' or 'delirium', derived from 'rêver' meaning 'to dream or wander'. The French verb likely traces to Old French 'rever', possibly from a Gallo-Roman root related to wandering. The word entered English in the 17th century.