Oneiric

WORD OF THE DAY

oneiric / adjective / oh-NYE-rik

Definition
1: of or relating to dreams
2: dreamy

Examples
The paintings, filled with fantastical imagery conjured by the artist's imagination, have a compellingly oneiric quality.

"Somewhere along the twisty path of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov, our brilliant dreamer-in-chief, came into contact with [aeronautical engineer and philosopher John W.] Dunne's theories of oneiric prophecy and was evidently inspired by them."
— Nicholson Baker, The New Republic, 21 Feb. 2018

Did You Know?
The notion of using the Greek noun oneiros (meaning "dream") to form the English adjective oneiric wasn't dreamed up until the mid-19th century. But back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, linguistic dreamers came up with a few oneiros spin-offs, giving English oneirocriticism, oneirocritical, and oneirocritic (each referring to dream interpreters or interpretation).
The surge in oneiros derivatives at that time may have been fueled by the interest then among English-speaking scholars in Oneirocritica, a book about dream interpretation by 2nd-century Greek soothsayer Artemidorus Daldianus.
In the 17th century, English speakers also melded Greek oneiros with the combining form ­-mancy ("divination") to create oneiromancy, meaning "divination by means of dreams."