Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Synonyms

dream up

British  

verb

  1. (tr, adverb) to invent by ingenuity and imagination

    to dream up an excuse for leaving
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
dream up Idioms  

  1. Invent, concoct, as in Count on her to dream up some explanation for her absence. This expression replaced the somewhat earlier dream out. [c. 1940]

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Near Bedford in the UK, it's where the company's researchers dream up new recipes and develop their production processes.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

No matter the strengths of AI, a chatbot cannot dream up stories with flawed characters and themes and arcs and failures and triumphs—with ambiguous finales.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

Then build the most fabulous, flavor-packed fruit salad you can dream up.

From Salon ● May 31, 2025

There are ETFs for pretty much any concept a financial professional could dream up and sell to investors.

From Slate ● Apr. 22, 2025

For myself, I am still haunted by those vowel sounds and those uniquely ungrammatical sentences only she could dream up!

From "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Dictionary.com's Learning Companion

Go beyond just looking up words.
Remember them forever with VocabTrainer.

Start training