dream up

verb

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

   to dream up an excuse for leaving

Idioms and Phrases

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

Masli responded by dreaming up a ritual involving a sock that was set on fire in symbolic purgation of burdensome resentments.

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Son had grown obsessed with the singularity, the hypothetical moment where AI becomes smarter than humans and transforms civilization, and was dreaming up ideas such as building AI-powered robot factories across the world.

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Is the writer at the center of the play a literary compilation dreamed up by an AI program or an actual human character?

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You can use your cameo—and your friends’ cameos—to star in any video you dream up.

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Casting Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, stars of the goofball comedy “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” sounds like an idea dreamed up by undergraduate theater nerds smoking strong weed.

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Related Words

• contrive 
• devise 
• hatch 
• invent